In this issue:

Sino-Russian Agreements on Border, Oil Supplies

'Strategic Triangle' Ministers Meet

Putin Opens Military Base in Tajikistan

Behind Putin's Apparent 'Endorsement' of George Bush

Nationwide Warning Strike in Russia

'Project Democracy' Targets Belarus

From Volume 3, Issue Number 43 of EIR Online, Published Oct. 26, 2004
Russia and the CIS News Digest

Sino-Russian Agreements on Border, Oil Supplies

China and Russia finalized the delimitation of their 4,370-km border on Oct. 14, during President Vladimir Putin's visit to Beijing. The agreement ended a 40-year process of resolving all boundary disputes between the two nations. In 1969, those disputes led to a short but nasty border war between China and the Soviet Union. Now, the Chinese side has made concessions regarding ownership of islands in the Amur River. At the same time, China has received promises of a better supply of Russian oil and gas. Putin said, "We have found a solution to the border issue, which allows us to have closer cooperation with regard to development of natural resources, environmental protection, and economic issues."

The two sides also signed a protocol on the completion of talks on getting Russia into the World Trade Organization and a Russian-Chinese Action Plan for 2005-08. But the major issue of the route of East Siberian oil pipelines—whether a new pipeline will go directly to China, or to Russian ports to supply Japan and Korea—was not resolved, being entangled in Russian internal disputes over the status of Yukos Oil company and policy on natural resource exploitation in general. On Oct. 21, Russian railways chief Gennadi Fadeyev said that the increase of Russian oil supplies to China, to the level of 30 million tons per year, would be delivered by rail. Lowered freight rates for oil would make this more efficient than a pipeline, Fadeyev claimed, stating that it would be unreasonable to invest $12 billion in building an oil pipeline to China and wait eight to ten years for returns.

Putin completed the three-day visit on Oct. 16, by meeting with leaders of five northwest Chinese provinces and regions. He called for Russian local governments and businesses to participate in developing China's west, which will promote the development of the Eurasian continent in various fields, Xinhua reported Oct. 16. Putin said that Russia has a rich experience, advanced technology, and quality personnel in oil and mineral exploration and delivery. He also said that Russian machinery and equipment businesses should bid for China's big projects like Qinghai-Tibet Railway, hydropower stations in Sichuan and Yunnan, and natural-gas projects in western regions. China's western region is a habitat of China's established science and industry bases, making it possible for Russia and China to cooperate in high-tech and personnel training, Putin said.

'Strategic Triangle' Ministers Meet

The Foreign Ministers of Russia, China, and India met in Almaty, Kazakhstan Oct. 21, on the eve of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA). The Foreign Ministers of 16 nations, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Palestine, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan gathered for the CICA event, which Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said would focus on terrorism.

After the meeting of the foreign ministers of the three large countries, called Eurasia's "strategic triangle" by former Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov, India's External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh said that India, Russia, and China "share a certain vision about how the world should look." From New Delhi, visiting senior Chinese diplomat Tang Jiaxuan said that China wants to institutionalize trilateral cooperation among Russia, China, and India. "We believe this trilateral cooperation contributes to world peace," Tang said.

Putin Opens Military Base in Tajikistan

On Oct. 17, President Putin visited Tajikistan, where he opened Russia's second large military base in the area (after the one in Kant, Kyrgyzstan), and attended a summit of the Central Asian Cooperation Organization (CACO), which Russia has just joined. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that up to 5,000 troops from Russia's 201 Motorized Division, which has policed the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border since the end of the U.S.S.R., would be stationed at the new base. In talks with Tajikistan's President Emomali Rakhmonov, Putin reached agreement on exchanging Russian forgiveness of Tajikistan's debts, in the range of $300 million, for ownership of the Nurek Control and Surveillance Center, built as part of the Soviet Space Program in 1980.

Putin's Central Asia talks nearly coincided with the official expansion of NATO into the region, with NATO's appointment of U.S. diplomat Robert Simmons, Jr. as envoy to Central Asia, on Oct. 21. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Schaffer toured five "-stans" of Central Asia. Turkmenistan has already pledged cooperation with NATO on Afghanistan. Schaffer is stressing the threats to the Central Asian countries from Islamic radical terrorists and drugs. In Kyrgyzstan, where the Islamic militants are most active, President Askayev said NATO help will be focussed on boosting mountain units protecting the country's remote borders. It is also evident that the U.S. military base in Manas, Uzbekistan, would play a significant role for NATO in Central Asia.

Behind Putin's Apparent 'Endorsement' of George Bush

Some British and Spanish press published triumphant commentaries about President Putin's Oct. 18 remark, made in Tajikistan, that the defeat of George Bush would be seen as "a victory for international terrorism." At a press conference after the CACO summit, Putin was asked about escalated attacks on foreign troops and civilians in Iraq. He prefaced his reply by saying, "Everyone knows that Russia was always against military action there. Today our views still differ considerably from those of President Bush on this point. So, everything I have to say on this subject will be the viewpoint of someone from the other camp. My views are the views of someone who does not share President Bush's position with regard to Iraq."

Putin continued, with what he had to have known would grab headlines: "At the same time, however, any objective observer can see that ... these attacks by international terrorism in Iraq, are directed today not only and even not so much against the international coalition forces, as against President Bush personally. International terrorism has set itself the goal of causing as much damage to Bush as it can, during the election campaign. International terrorism aims to try to prevent Bush's re-election as President of the United States. If they achieve this aim, they will, of course, celebrate their victory. They would be celebrating a tactical victory, but a nonetheless important victory for them over the United States, and over the international anti-terrorist coalition, to an extent, given the considerable role the United States plays in this coalition. We have to understand that this would give international terrorism an added boost to their activities, would give them renewed strength and could lead to an increase in their activities in various parts of the world."

Several days later, Putin accorded red-carpet treatment in Moscow to one of Bush's closest supporters in Europe, former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar, whose election defeat in March of this year was linked by the mass media to the bloody terrorist bombing in Madrid just days before that election.

Only fools would see in Putin's remarks some personal idiosyncrasy, driving him to take sides with a Bush Administration whose policies are pushing the world in the direction of "globalized" asymmetric warfare. Rather, they reflect the understandable, yet still tragic error in strategic judgment on the part of leading Moscow circles, which Lyndon LaRouche had identified in an Oct. 11 memorandum on problems in evaluating the Russian situation. In LaRouche's analysis, the Kremlin's recent defenses of Bush have nothing to do with real warmth of friendship. To the contrary, LaRouche warns, leading circles in Moscow are operating on the assumption that Bush will win the elections, and that, under those conditions, "war between the USA and Russia is inevitable over the medium-term." Therefore, they have decided to feign friendship to Bush, "maintaining good relations as long as possible, hoping that the U.S.A., will weaken itself strategically during the interim."

The mistake, LaRouche emphasized, is the failure to grasp and act upon the significance of the "LaRouche factor" in the United States, in the struggle to defeat Bush and shape a prospective "FDR Presidency" around John Kerry. At the same time, Moscow has so far not faced the full implications of the fact that the international financial interests behind Cheney and Bush, known as the synarchists, are the same crowd that sponsored the spread of fascism in Italy, France, Germany, and other countries in the 1920s and 1930s.

LaRouche emphasized that the main responsibility for Russia's mistaken evaluation of the prospects for a different U.S. policy, lies not with Russia itself, but in the stubborn opposition to LaRouche's growing influence, on the part of certain leading circles in the U.S. and Europe. Reinforcing that misjudgement in Russia, has been the behavior of the U.S. Democratic Party leadership, of excluding LaRouche from the campaign and debate process during the period leading up to the Boston Convention. More recently, Moscow has noted the public promotion of Richard Holbrooke as a likely choice for Secretary of State under Kerry. Holbrooke, like former President Bill Clinton's noxious Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, is long notorious for his anti-Russian stance, signalled most recently by his co-signing of an open letter to the governments of EU and NATO states, condemning Putin's domestic and foreign policy. To counteract the dangerous effects of this behavior on the strategic perceptions of Russia and other nations, LaRouche suggests that Kerry's best option would be to publicly call on Clinton to accept the post of Secretary of State in a Kerry Administration.

Nationwide Warning Strike in Russia

One million people took part in a nationwide strike at Russian hospitals, schools, and scientific institutes on Oct. 20, protesting frozen or slashed federal spending on these institutions, according to Russian wire reports. A protest rally was also staged in front of the State Duma. The strikers said that anything less than a 50% wage increase by the end of the year is unacceptable, because it is impossible to live on a current public-sector salary. One teacher, addressing a 30,000-strong rally in the city of Voronezh, told reporters she had to work as a department store janitor during the night, before going to school to teach.

'Project Democracy' Targets Belarus

A referendum held Oct. 17 in Belarus voted up President Alexander Lukashenka's proposal to remove the constitutional two-term limit for any President, with over 77% of all registered voters supporting it. In parliamentary elections the same day, opposition parties won no seats. Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) denounced the vote as "significantly short of OSCE standards," and having taken place in "a highly distorted campaign environment." Protest demonstrations of hundreds of people in Minsk were broken up by police.

Many people in Belarus watched with apprehension, as the U.S. Congress on Oct. 4 unanimously passed the Belarus Democracy Act, championed by Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ). It authorizes the U.S. President to pump money into Belarussian opposition political parties, NGOs, and media, and prohibits agencies of the U.S. government from providing loans and investment to the Belarussian government, except for the provision of humanitarian goods and agricultural or medical products. Furthermore, the U.S. President must present annual reports to Congress on the sale and delivery of weapons or weapons-related technologies from Belarus to any country supporting international terrorism, and report on goods, services, and credits received by Belarus in exchange for weapons or weapons-related technologies. Most ludicrous, the bill requires a yearly report to Congress on the personal assets and wealth of Lukashenka and other senior officials. President Bush hurried to sign the new law, on Oct. 20.

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