RUSSIA AND EASTERN EUROPE NEWS DIGEST
Russia/U.S. Disarmament Agreement a Complete Farce
Discussions with a well-informed Russian observer and an Executive Intelligence Review senior staff member showed full agreement with Lyndon LaRouche's assessment that the new disarmament deal between the U.S. and Russia is a complete farce. The source noted that, as a U.S. official openly admitted in a White House briefing, each side will be essentially free to do what it wants, with just a declared attention to reduce warheads to such-and-such a level in 10 years. There are no concrete measures for control, and no concrete schedule. In fact, the negotiations indicate "basic disagreement," while the so-called breakthrough in relations really signals that "the U.S. can do anything it wants," and that, among other things, "Russia will not seriously oppose a U.S. operation in Iraq."
As to the outcome to be expected from President Bush's visit this week to President Putin in Moscow, the observer said, "They will sign several other worthless documents." He added that Russia has reason to be concerned about "what are the real intentions of the U.S." There are evidently "two or three different groups" making policy in the U.S. government. The one represented by John Bolton, for example, has been openly threatening Russia and China. On this background, Russia has so far insisted on maintaining an adequate nuclear capability, even upgrading it in some respects.
On the question of Russia-NATO talks, this source said that Russia will get no real voice in military policy, but only a veto power on such questions as fisheries. It is like "becoming a full member of a butterfly-catching club."
On May 15, the NATO Secretary General, British General Lord George Robertson, reported on the creation of a new joint NATO-Russia Council, to be finalized at a NATO meeting on May 28.
Russian General Ivashov Opposes NATO Talks
According to the May 14 edition of Strana.ru, the online news service, influential Russian military expert and strategist Gen. Leonid Ivashov said that Russia is wrong to give priority to cooperation with NATOan organization that has no political future. Ivashov was commenting on the Russia-NATO meeting in Reykjavik, underway at the time of his remarks. "Everything points to the fact that the military and political status of NATO is being downgraded. NATO is being used by the U.S. as an instrument to control Europe." He noted that President Bush had not even mentioned NATO in his State of the Union address to the U.S. Congress, and that U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had clearly stated that no alliances or coalitions would be permitted to influence Pentagon policy decisions.
"I have no positive prognosis in connection with the events which are now occurring along the axis Russia-NATO," said Ivashov. "They represent a serious departure from the essence and content of the founding agreement between Russia and NATO in 1997.... I oppose giving priority to cooperation with that organization."
Moscow Radio Forum: Hamas, Sharon, and Netanyahu Are Allies
The Russian-Jewish angle in Middle East terrorism, and the reasons that Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are allies, were included topics of a remarkable discussion on the popular Russian radio station "Ekho Moskvy," broadcast on May 12 and carried in full on the station's website. The program was a rare exception to the recent, simplistic coverage of Mideast events in the Russian media, where reporting in the recent two to three months has been strongly "tilted" in the direction of Sharon as an honest "anti-terrorist fighter."
Many things were put out in this broadcast, which are rarely aired in the Russian media. Participants in the discussion included the head of the Duma Commission on International Affairs, Mikhael Margelov, and military observer Pavel Felgenhauer. The theme was "Who is guilty in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?" Here are some excerpts:
Felgenhauer: The history is naturally a long one and it is clear that both sides carry responsibility, and I don't approve of digging around in history to try to find out who was the first to use terrorist methodsalthough the first were actually Jews, socialist-revolutionaries who came from Russia, where modern terrorism, generally speaking, was born.
"Narodnaya Volya" (Will of the People) was a Jewish terrorist organization, which taught the Arabs to use bombs, which the Arabs quickly learned. So it is probably better to go back, if not directly to Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000, then perhaps a bit earlier, when there was hope for peace ... but there were powerful forces on both sides that didn't want peace, and who destroyed it. They worked hand in handboth Sharon, and Netanyahu, and Hamas.
Margelov went further back into the historical background of the establishment of Israel, the failure to create a Palestinian state, and the origins of the Israeli-Arab conflict, placing major blame on the British in particular and on "competition of old imperial powersGreat Britain and France," as well as between the "new imperial powers," the U.S. and U.S.S.R. Coming back to the present day, Margelov noted, "There is no question that the Israeli state practices terror, at least certain elements of the Israeli military machine and secret services, and the Palestinians respond with terrorism."
Felgenhauer: And, in fact, one should add, that on the Arab side not everything is what it seems. The Hamas movement, which grew up in the Gaza sector, was very greatly supported, in its emergence and development, by the Israeli secret services, because they saw in Hamas an instrument for destroying Arafat. And today, when Arafat has come to symbolize peace ... Arafat has become the main enemy, and Hamas became the de facto ally of the Israeli right and the Israeli intelligence services....
Margelov: ... And why did the Israeli secret services not do anything concerning Sheik Akhmad Yasin, the theoretician of terrorism, the theoretician of the Hamas movement? Why do they trap Arafat in Ramallah? There is some cunning manipulation in this whole approach. That is the problem....
Felgenhauer: Truly, ... each time Sharon and the present leadership of Israel needs to interrupt the peace process and run some kind of operation, a terrorist is suddenly able to penetrate through the extremely efficient and professional Israeli security system, to carry out a suicide bombing. And now Hamas has gone over to using plastic explosives, hence the large number of victims. A military method. Just as the killing of Rabin, by the way, raised many doubts: How could it happen, with such a remarkable security service, that a person could come up to Rabin and leisurely shoot him? ...And the well-known, well-documented fact, that the Israeli secret services were involved in setting up Hamas.... Tactically, they are allies. And it was just like that in the time of the Russian Empirewhen the Okhrana and terrorists often worked hand in hand.
Neo-Cons and Israelis Target Russia-Iran Cooperation
Top neo-conservatives and think tanks in Israel and the U.S. are demanding that President Bush get Russian President Vladimir Putin to cut Iranian nuclear cooperation. Among the most vocal on this point is Richard Perle. Recently the Heritage Foundation's Ariel Cohen proposed that the U.S. promise to deduct from Russia's Paris Club debt (Soviet-era state-to-state loans) an amount equivalent to what Iraq owes Russia, in exchange for Russian support to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Perle, in an interview with The Moscow Times, puts forward a more grandiose debt-forgiveness plan as the lure to get Putin to end Russian nuclear contracts with Iran.
The New York Times on May 15 played up leaks that Bush would pressure Putin on the technology transfer question. On May 16, an article in the Jerusalem Post titled, "Israel wants Iran nukes on agenda of Bush-Putin summit," said that technology transfer from Russia to Iran has been intensively discussed during high-level U.S.-Israeli contacts during the past two weeks. (It is known that the U.S.-Israeli discussions in Washington were headed by utopian warriors Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Armitage.)
The May 16 Moscow Times article by Anna Raff begins, "All of Russia's Soviet-era debt should be written off as a way of persuading Moscow to end troubling nuclear cooperation with Iran, an influential security advisor to the U.S. Presidential Administration said Wednesday." In a phone interview, Perle said the U.S. government and American banks should act first, "Then we could turn to European governments, and they could put pressure on their banks. We would take it one country at a time." Raff went on to quote a spokesman for Deutsche Bank, who rejoined, "We are a free country. The government has no right to expropriate any private business or take money from a private bank."
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