Russia and the CIS News Digest
Putin: Shanghai Cooperation Organization Should Become 'Transcontinental Bridge'
"I am convinced that the SCO, from a historical point of view, is called upon to become a kind of transcontinental bridge which will organically link the European and Asian continents," stated Russian President Vladimir Putin in greetings to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Foreign Ministers meeting held in Beijing Jan. 15. "Such a role of the SCO, stems first of all from the unique geopolitical position of the SCO member-states, the philosophy professed by the SCO in respect to a variety of cultures, beliefs, and traditions; openness and orientation for extensive international cooperation." Putin's remarks were reported in Novosti.
En route to Moscow after the meeting and his visit to Mongolia, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov gave a press conference in Novosibirsk Jan. 16, where he said that relations with Asian countries are of "vital and special importance" for Russia. The Foreign Ministry has opened its sixth mission in Siberia, in Novosibirsk, where it is to help the Russian President's plenipoteniary in the district to develop international relations, especially economic contacts for inter-regional cooperation. He said that development of Siberia and the Far East, closest to the Asia-Pacific region, are of special importance.
The Foreign Ministry is paying great attention to developing trade and economic relations between Siberia and China and Mongolia. Trade between China and Russia in 2003 was up 30%, over 2002, to US$16 billion. Ivanov said that the SCO aims to develop trade and economic cooperation between Asia-Pacific nations and the CIS Asian states, which will secure the economic prosperity of Siberia and Russian Far East. While in Beijing, Ivanov had bilateral talks with his Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing, on the situation around North Korea. He stated that the current level of Russian-Chinese relations, "without exaggeration, can be called the best in history.... The Chinese-Russian partnership is now a major factor both of regional and global security and stability."
(For coverage of the SCO meeting, see ASIA DIGEST.)
Economic, Space Agreements Reached at Russia-Kazakstan Summit
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Jan. 9-10 visited Astana, the capital of Kazakstan, where he and President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a number of key economic agreements on oil extraction and transport, as well as on military cooperation. "The demand of the global economy for energy resources is increasing. Russia and Kazakstan are going to cooperate in this sphere for their common benefit. And we have to emphasize our common hope for a global policy that excludes wars over energy resources," said Putin.
Russian mass media (including ORT, RTR, and Kommersant Daily) on Jan. 9-10 highlighted the agreement on common use of Baikonur, the U.S.S.R.'s major space airfield in Jezkazgan Region. An agreement for Russia to lease Baikonur for 50 years covers not only property relations, but also new prospects for scientific cooperation. At a joint press conference, Nazarbayev emphasized that the Baikonur agreement will serve many generations of Russians and Kazaks. Putin said he highly appreciated the qualification of Kazak space scientists, and expressed gratitude to Kazak politicians for their key contribution in the design of the Eurasian Economic Community. Russian space companies will assist Kazakstan in launching their telecommunication satellite. Moreover, the Russian side promised that the new modern space rocket, Angara (which is supposed to replace Proton), will be launched from Baikonur, not Plesetsk. Through a new bilateral complex named Baiterek, Russia and Kazakstan will each provide half the financing for the launches, each side also receiving half the revenues.
Other agreements included:
- International relations, including the role of the United Nations, the Community of Independent States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and Eurasian cooperation with the European Union.
- Border-area cooperation against organized crime, the drug trade, and terrorism, and making the borders work as a reliable transit point for trade; new border crossing points and customs infrastructure.
- Cooperation in the oil and gas sectors, mineral resource exploration and development, with joint new projects envisaged for the northern regions of Kazakstan and the Kazak Caspian Sea shelf.
- Military-industrial cooperation, including exports.
- Cultural and scientific exchange in 2004, the Year of Russian Culture in Kazakstan, and beyond. One special project is the joint construction of a thermonuclear fusion research facility, based on an updated model of the Soviet-era Tokamak reactor, in the Semipalatinsk region. This is also to provide crucial scientific data for the planned international fusion experiment ITER.
New Russian Institution for Infrastructure and Regional Planning
When former St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev was brought to Moscow last year as Deputy Prime Minister in charge of natural monopolies reform, there was much discussion about whether he were being set up to fail, or given a truly strategic mission. In an interview in Izvestia of Jan. 15, Yakovlev revealed some of what he has been working on. The newspaper reports that Yakovlev's team will be submitting to the Cabinet in February, a Spatial Development Concept of Russia, with a new government research institute attached. The institute will be staffed by experts from Russia's regions.
Yakovlev said the country's "spatial development"how the federal government can prioritize regional projects to the best advantage of allhad been discussed by the Cabinet on Dec. 26. In 2003, he said, the development of a national transport strategy represented a step towards such a national concept. In addition to dealing with population migration within the Russian Federation, "There is a need to determine other lines, too: transportation, industry, construction of ports, and development of mineral resources. However, these issues should not be settled separately, by a regional or sector principle, but comprehensively, which a general plan for spatial development actually makes possible."
Yakovlev pushed aside the interviewer's wish to draw a parallel with the Soviet Gosplan, the State Planning Commission, saying that it was simply a matter of the national interest to overcome the "patchwork quilt principle," by which regional economic planning is currently done in Russia. He stressed that national guidance, especially in building infrastructure, is essential to making private investment work: "Some people believe that business will decide on everything by itself and the state should not interfere.... But if business feels the state is interested in the project and is prepared to provide infrastructural conditions, it invests more readily. Only the state can decide in what sequence mineral resources deposits should be developed and in what sequence to build roads. Or in which ... region it is more profitable to build a port from the standpoint of federal, not just territorial interests."
Russian Media Focus on Dollar Collapse
"The ruble has overcome another psychological barrier," Russian state-owned RTR-TV announced Jan. 9, reporting on the fall of the dollar/ruble rate to below 29, on the previous day. The TV report cited the "huge budget deficit and immense foreign debt." The business paper Kommersant the same day carried a front-page analysis by its economics columnist Sergei Minayev, who predicted a new wave of panic on currency markets resulting from the ugly picture of the U.S. economy, presented in the just-issued report by the International Monetary Fund.
Izvestia's headlines on consecutive days, Jan. 9 and 10, were "The Dollar Will Collapse," and "The Dollar Has Collapsed." The first of the two articles summarized the IMF's warnings about a precipitous collapse of the dollar. The paper also pointed out that the main investors in U.S. government securities are Asian central banks. Russia used to start the New Year by purchasing U.S. dollars, but this practice is disappearing, Izvestia said. "The [Russian] Central Bank is unlikely to hurry to print new rubles in order to exchange them for U.S. dollars, thus financing the U.S. federal Treasury."
Russian Duma Convenes
The new Russian State Duma (the lower house of the Russian Parliament) began business Jan. 16, hearing a presentation on the economy by Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. The Prime Minister outlined the government's plan for bills to be introduced this session, emphasizing ones on social protection and natural resources policy. As expected, the United Russia (Yedro) party, with its more than two-thirds majority in the Duma, assigned itself the leadership position on all Duma committees. The Rodina (Homeland) bloc of Sergei Glazyev put forward candidates to lead 10 of the committees, but the Duma voted for the United Russia choices.
Georgia's Ajaria Region Re-establishes State of Emergency
The week of Jan. 5, police in Batumi (capital of the Ajaria region in Georgia) detained two armed persons from the George Soros-financed Kmara ("Enough!") movement, which had provided the shock troops for Michael Saakashvili's overthrow of Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze late last year. Besides weapons, the two young men had a lot of posters, urging local citizens to "peacefully overthrow" the "dictatorial regime" of Aslan Abashidze, the leader in Ajaria. This scandal became the pretext for reimposing the state of emergency.
On Jan. 9, the Court of Batumi sentenced the two detained Kmara members, Romeo Chkhartishvili and Lasha Hazhomia, to three months in jail. On the same day, the Ajarian police arrested two more Kmara activists, Beka Murvanidze and Irakly Chkhotua. In a speech, Aslan Abashidze accused the new authorities in Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, of preparing a coup d'etat in Adjaria and an armed intervention into the area. In his turn, President-elect Saakashvili expressed dissatisfaction with Abashidze's policy in "unusually harsh tones," Russian TV reported. Acting President Nino Burjanadze admitted that during talks with her, Abashidze had warned that if Kmara did not cease its subversive activity in Ajaria, its activists would undergo punishment. Russian sources note that Batumi is a key port, as well as the location of customs posts on the Georgian-Turkish border.
|