Russia and the CIS News Digest
Putin: Terrorism Is Deployed To Break Up Russia
In late-September speeches to various audiences, Russian President Vladimir Putin continued to campaign on his theme that "international terrorism," and the forces behind it, aim to break up the Russian Federation. The need to foil that intent defines the high stakes in his current efforts to consolidate the power of the Russian state.
On Sept. 24, before the World Congress of News Agencies, held in Moscow, Putin said that "the ultimate aim of the series of terrorist acts, organized in Russia, was not only to destabilize the country's life, but to deal a blow to its integrity." Calling on the media to avoid "any, even unintentional, form of assistance to terrorists," Putin warned that people should be aware of how media coverage gets exploited "to multiply the psychological and information impact during hostage seizures." While noting that the fight against terrorism "should not be an excuse for suppressing the freedom and independence of the mass media," he had particularly pointed remarks for foreign press and officials, regarding "double standards" in the discussion of terrorism. In concluding remarks to the conference, Putin asked: "How can the horrible tragedy in Beslan, the execution of completely innocent children, be called a siege, as some media outlets called it, the 'Beslan siege'? Even wild beasts don't act like that, and reporters call it a 'siege.' And call the people who do this 'rebels.' If someone is seeking to achieve political objectives by such means, everybody should have just one definition: murderer and terrorist."
Earlier, in reply to a question from the Chinese press agency Xinhua, Putin once again referred to persistence of intelligence agencies abroad, in exploiting "terrorists" to further their goals, and implicitly criticized the practice of treating the Chechen insurgency as separate from religious-fanaticism-driven terrorism elsewhere: "At one time, the so-called socialist camp tried to export the socialist revolution. This is a thing of the past, but the prerequisites were created in the course of that struggle, for the emergence of extremism based on religious fanaticism. That genie was also let out of the bottle. We must together force it back now. One link of the international terrorist net must not be used for achieving geopolitical interests in relations with other countries, with assertions that two heads of the hydra are dangerous, but one is not. It should be understood that this is a common threat."
The Russian President took up these themes again, when he spoke Sept. 29 at a meeting of the Presidential Council for Coordination with Religious Organizations. He told its 22 members, who represent the major faiths within the Russian Federation, "I would like to stress: The main goal of the unprecedented series of terrorist acts, organized and carried out in Russia, was to break up our society, to sow hostility and distrust among different peoples, to create a divided between Islam and the rest of the world, and ultimately deal a blow to the unity of Russia."
Lavrov: Stop Narco-Financing of Terrorism
In his speech to the UN General Assembly, delivered Sept. 23, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov included a call for action to cut off the financial support for acts of terrorism. It was point five, of a seven-point agenda for fighting terrorism, which Lavrov presented. In particular, he said that illegal narcotics flows out of Afghanistan must be stopped, since this criminal business is a major source of funds for terrorism. "The drug trade is closely intertwined with terrorism," Lavrov said.
Russia To Shift Holiday to 'Time of Troubles' Date
United Russia, Rodina, and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia have introduced a bill in the Russian State Duma, to reorganize the calendar of national holidays in the country. One of the changes, all of which are likely to be adopted, is to eliminate the Nov. 7 holiday that marked the 1917 Great October Socialist (Bolshevik) Revolution, and more recently has been called the Day of Reconciliation and Accord. It would be replaced with a holiday on Nov. 4, the date on which in 1612 forces led by Minin and Pozharsky drove Polish occupation forces out of Moscow. That event ended the so-called "Time of Troubles," the period of coups and disorder in Russiaafter the death of Ivan IV ("the Terrible"), before the beginning of the Romanov Dynasty, and not long before the Thirty Years' War gripped Western Europewhich was the subject of Alexander Pushkin's tragedy Boris Godunov, and of Friedrich Schiller's last, unfinished play Demetrius.
Fradkov to EU: Energy Cooperation Must Honor Russia's Interests
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov began a visit to The Hague Sept. 29, for bilateral talks, and to meet with Dutch leaders who currently hold the European Union chairmanship. A Russia-EU summit is in preparation for Nov. 10. Addressing journalists there, Fradkov said that the oft-discussed matter of Russia's ensuring Europe's energy security, should be posed differently. "Europeans have been raising the issue of ensuring their energy security for a long time and with insistence," Itar-TASS quoted Fradkov, "But our interests, including geostrategic ones, should be regarded as the cornerstone. Russia must push for long-term accords with Europe, which would help it develop its own national power grid, power-generation capacity, and the industrial, agricultural and transport sectors."
The remarks reported by Itar-TASS echoed a speech Fradkov made earlier in the week, on the need for a state-led national industrial policy in Russia.
Fradkov held other meetings, geared to the continuation of Russian interaction with the world's biggest oil companies, around petroleum exports from Russia, including talks with Royal Dutch/Shell leaders, on that company's investment in Siberian oil, the Sakhalin fields, "and a number of other fields that are not being publicly discussed yet."
ConocoPhillips Wins $2 Billion Stake in Lukoil
ConocoPhillips has won a 7.6% stake in Russia's Lukoil, paying $1.988 billion at an auction, it was announced Sept. 29. Conoco said it would buy another 2.4% stake of Lukoil on the open market, and would seek to raise its share in the company to 20% within three more years. Conoco's chief executive James Mulva said: "This is a strategic investment. ConocoPhillips has become the exclusive equity partner of Lukoil." Lukoil has the world's second largest oil reserves after ExxonMobil. Also an open question, is the fate of the contracts held by Lukoil, with the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein, to develop the large West Qurna oilfield in Iraq.
Russia To Integrate Infrastructure in Central Asia
Anatoli Chubais, CEO of Russia's national electricity utility, UES Russia, said at a Sept. 28 press conference that the company might link to Afghanistan's energy system via Tajikistan. Itar-TASS reported that Chubais said this could happen during the next three to ten years, as UES projects in Tajikistan are completed. "Afghanistan is even now receiving electric power from Tajikistan, which in turn, is connected to Russia. We are seriously analyzing grid projects for Afghanistan," he said. The Russian firm also is working to develop "large-scale projects" in Kyrgyzstan.
Farther down the road, Chubais said, the UES Russia system could be connected to China's grid. "At present this topic sounds hypothetical, but it could become a reason for serious talks in a year," Chubais said. The press conference took place in connection with a Moscow conference called "Russia: Investment in a Growth Economy." Chubais noted that UES Russia cooperation with Iran has also been discussed, even as Iran works towards increased energy cooperation with both Azerbaijan and Armenia."
Russian Cabinet Votes for Kyoto Treaty Ratification
The Russian government voted Sept. 30 in favor of adherence to the Kyoto Treaty on limiting so-called "greenhouse gases." They did this, despite expert evaluations, submitted by the Russian Academy of Sciences, which showed that 1) the "global warming" premises of the treaty are unsound, and 2) the financial benefits Russia may get from selling its air-pollution quotas to other countries, will not outweigh the losses from the suppression of industrial development involved with doing that.
Presidential adviser Andrei Illarionov, a radical free-trader who's opposed to Kyoto (not because he's pro-industry, but because he's anti-regulation), said that the decision was a bad one, but "politically necessary." He did not elaborate. Adherence to Kyoto has been demanded of Russia by the EU, in earlier talks, as a quid quo pro for EU support for Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization.
North Caucasus Kingpin Implicated in Klebnikov Murder
On Sept. 28, Moscow police chief Gen. Lt. Vladimir Pronin announced that two Chechens have been implicated in connection with the gangland-style slaying last July of Paul Klebnikov, the American editor of Forbes magazine's Russian edition. Pronin said that the men were implicated when ballistics tests showed that a handgun, confiscated when they were arrested for a kidnap-for-ransom scheme, was the weapon used to kill Klebnikov. The men deny the charge and say they got the gun from a third party. The next day, Vedomosti newspaper quoted an unnamed source in the Prosecutor General's office, who said Pronin had compromised the investigation by his "publicity stunt" in leaking the connection to Klebnikov.
Russian media monitored by RFE/RL Newsline have reported that investigators are looking at a "Chechen trail" in the Klebnikov case. Author of the earlier book Godfather of the Kremlin, about Boris Berezovsky, Klebnikov's last book was the Russian-language Dialogue with a Barbarian. In this 2003 volume, Klebnikov published excerpts from 20 hours of interviews he did in 2001 with Khodj-Akhmad Nukhayev, on the latter's career as a criminal businessman, who moved on the status of ideologue and financier for separatist guerrilla forces in Chechnya. In the late 1990s, Nukhayev was also in business partnership with Lord Alistair McAlpine, the British Tory fundraiser who defected to Jimmy Goldsmith's political movement, in the Caucasus Investment Fund and Caucasus Open Market project to turn the entire Russian North Caucasus, into a free-trade zone. Nukhayev also had criminal business interests in the Port of Novorossiysk in the 1990s, which were reportedly subsequently cleaned out by Russia. Novorossiysk has been a major transshipment point in illegal economic flows between Central Asia and Europe, including narcotics, weapons, and women being taken into sex slavery.
When Klebnikov interviewed him, Nukhayev resided in Baku. Klebnikov told Izvestia that Nukhayev disappeared from there around the time of the October 2002 Nord-Ost theater hostage-taking in Moscow. But he remains active behind the scenes. Greetings from Nukhayev were read at a November 2003 Moscow conference on "The Caucasus Against Globalism," which was attended by the self-styled "Eurasianist" Alexander Dugin, and by Russian Academy of Sciences ethnographer by Sergei Arutyunov, who publicly favors separation of much of the North Caucasus from Russia.
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