December 11, 2000   

This Date's Issues:   4680 • 4681

Johnson's Russia List
#4681
11 December 2000
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. The Independent on Sunday (UK): Tim Whewell, Russians fear takeover by Chinese in east.
2. Washington Times: David Sands, Despite likely pardon, Russian intentions hard to gauge.
3. Baltimore Sun: Sarah Koenig, To be Russian and young is cool. Trend: The nation's oldest foreign-language newspaper has begun courting the younger members of the Russian immigrant community. (Novoye Russkoye Slovo)
4. Washington Post: Jim Hoagland, Bush II Arms Control.
5. Andrew Miller: Russian Mystery.
6. Reuters: Chernobyl -- one button ends a nightmare.
7. Itar-Tass: Stable Market Economy in Place in Russia-Gref.
8. The Russia Journal: Otto Latsis, Going from glee to gloom. (re economy)
9. Reuters: Cuba next stop as Putin restores Soviet ally ties.
10. Reuters: Russian arms scrapping plan could start by year-end. (chemical weapons)
11. Boston Globe: David Filipov, Trafficking flourishes on Afghan drug route.]

******

#1
The Independent on Sunday (UK)
December 10, 2000
Russians fear takeover by Chinese in east
BY TIM WHEWELL IN VLADIVOSTOK
Tim Whewell is presenter of `Gold Domes, Black Earth', a series on Russia
beginning on 4 January on Radio 4.

"THEY SPREAD like jellyfish, penetrating everywhere - and gradually you find
that without a shot being fired, they've simply taken over." The grey-bearded
Cossack in his 19th-century military uniform - tight khaki tunic, blue
trousers with yellow stripe - gestured up into the thickly wooded hills
behind us. Nothing moved. But over the top of the ridge lay the country
Vladimir Pozhidayev was referring to: China, which is flexing its economic
muscle in the Russian Far East and which locals fear may soon stage a
demographic takeover too.

Mr Pozhidayev, 58, lives in the village of Pogran-Petrovka. It is the first
in what the authorities intend to be a chain of half-agricultural,
half-military settlements guarding the long, winding frontier between China
and Russia's maritime territory, nearly 6,000 miles from Moscow. Cossacks
spearheaded Russia's conquest of Siberia and the northern Pacific coast in
Tsarist times. Now the authoritarian regional governor, Yevgeny Nazdratenko,
is encouraging them to return to their old role as an elite military caste,
helping to protect the fringes of empire from hostile incursion.

At Pogran-Petrovka, they have been given an abandoned army base, a series of
crumbling concrete barracks in the wilderness. Their job is to mount joint
patrols with regular border troops and establish a self-sufficient community
to be part of a human shield against China.

So far, the settlement consists of two families, half-a-dozen single men, a
few turkeys and a large pig, and Mr Pozhidayev's only confrontations have
been with Chinese poachers. They slip over the border in search of bears and
tigers - now extinct in China itself - whose parts are prized for use in
medicines and aphrodisiacs. Ginseng roots, frogs and jellyfish are also
disappearing from the untamed forests and coasts of the Russian Far East.
They end up, at exorbitant prices, in restaurants and pharmacies south of the
border.

Mr Pozhidayev, a former sable hunter, and his comrades have plans to bring 60
families to Pogran-Petrovka. Their main task, they believe, will be to stop
illegal immigrants; almost everyone in the maritime territory is convinced
that the Chinese want more living space. In the whole of the Russian Far
East, they point out, there are fewer than 10 million souls scattered across
thousands of square miles. Just over the border, in the three northernmost
provinces of China, there are at least 250 million.

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 2,400-mile border with China was
tightly sealed, a legacy of the bitter feud between the two Communist giants
in the 1960s and 70s. The capital of the region, the great Pacific port and
naval base of Vladivostok, was a completely closed city. Even Russians from
other parts of the country needed special permission to visit.

owadays, Chinese is spoken everywhere in Vladivostok. In the past 10 years,
traders from across the border have poured in, finding an eager market for
the cheap consumer goods that Russian industry has never been able to supply.
At Ussuriisk, an hour's drive from the regional capital, the "Chinese bazaar"
is more like a separate town. The market is so busy it stays open all night.
There are 2,000 traders living semi-permanently in metal freight containers
above their stalls of fake designer-label trainers and anoraks. They have
their own restaurants, a sauna - even a casino.

Families in the region, where an average salary can be as low as pounds 30 a
month, wear nothing but Chinese clothes. In Vladivostok, hotels depend
heavily on tourists from over the border, and the new Chinese restaurants do
good business. Yet almost no one has a good word for the Chinese. "They
behave as though they own the town," said Irina Gimilshtein, a tour guide.
"If Russia is not strong, there is a threat that we will lose this
territory."

In fact, the present-day maritime territory was largely uninhabited when the
Russians arrived. China makes no official claim to the area, and the head of
China's parliament, Li Peng, has been welcomed in Vladivostok by Governor
Nazdratenko. Official estimates of the number of Chinese settling illegally
in the region every year are as low as 3,000 to 4,000, yet it plainly suits
the authorities' purposes to pander to local paranoia.

Mr Nazdratenko has made a point of travelling to one of the few tiny pockets
of disputed territory along the border, vowing to defend it with his own
breast. Newspapers, in a region where the media is tightly controlled, revel
in headlines such as "Conquistadors from the Heavenly Kingdom". And Sergei
Pushkaryov, head of the federal migration service in Vladivostok, points to a
map of border control points and says firmly: "It's us or them."

Mr Pushkaryov's great-grandparents were among the pioneers who helped to
settle the maritime territory in the early 1900s. In those days, peasants
were given grants of farming land. Now, in an attempt to bolster the Russian
population, Mr Pushkaryov wants to revive the scheme in a different form,
offering subsidies to families prepared to start a new life in the Far East.
He admits, though, that it will be difficult to attract newcomers to a region
where whole towns are often deprived of hot water and heating in winter
because of the authorities' huge debts to the local energy company.

Apart from visiting American sailors, and the fact that almost all cars are
second-hand Japanese imports, built to drive on the left, there is not much
cosmopolitan about Vladivostok. But the local planning chief, Svetlana
Parinova, doesn't see a problem. "Investors want quick returns," she says.
"We need help for basic industries. The idea that we might receive more from
across the Pacific than we can from Moscow - I doubt that very much."

Mrs Parinova admits that just a few hours down the road, on the Chinese side
of the border, former villages have been transformed into towns of gleaming
skyscrapers, while the Russian Far East remains as poor and miserable as it
ever was. But she can see no way of sharing in the boom other than becoming
part of China, which she naturally rejects. "One day," she says, "we'll build
a paradise here too. But it'll be on our own terms." It is a sentiment any
patriotic Cossack would heartily agree with.

*******

#2
Washington Times
December 11, 2000
Despite likely pardon, Russian intentions hard to gauge
By David R. Sands

     Russia's decision to release an American businessman convicted last week
of spying has done little to ease misgivings over a series of provocative
steps that suggest an increasingly confrontational posture from Moscow. 
     President Vladimir Putin made it clear over the weekend that he will
pardon businessman Edmond Pope, whose sentencing Wednesday to 20 years in a
Russian penal colony angered the Clinton administration and enraged many
lawmakers in Congress.
     But the sentencing was just one in a series of moves that suggest Mr.
Putin is maneuvering to seek advantage in a number of areas while the
American political elite remains transfixed by the U.S. transition drama.
     "Any new U.S. administration is going to be seeking a modus vivendi with
Russia," said Heritage Foundation analyst Ariel Cohen. "Mr. Putin's actions
in recent days suggest he's trying to make that harder than it was before."
     In recent weeks, Russia has:
     â?¢ Sentenced Mr. Pope for espionage, the first such conviction of an
American in Russia in 40 years.
     â?¢ Scrapped a secret understanding with the United States to end
weapons
sales to Iran.
     â?¢ Revived the melody â?" though not the lyrics â?" of the old Soviet
national anthem commissioned by Josef Stalin. At Mr. Putin's insistence, the
Russian State Duma last week also adopted the old red military banner from
Soviet times as well as the tricolor flag and the double-headed eagle coat of
arms dating from the time of the czars.
     â?¢ Renewed its diplomatic press in Europe against a national missile
defense plan strongly backed by George W. Bush, the U.S. president-elect
pending legal appeals.
     â?¢ Announced that Mr. Putin this week will become the first Russian
leader to visit Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
     Even in the Pope case, Russian media have speculated that Mr. Putin's
action is driven more by internal considerations than a desire for good
relations with the United States.
     Letting Mr. Pope go home could "kill several birds with one stone," the
influential Moscow daily Segodnya wrote in an editorial late last week.
     In this way, the newspaper said, the Federal Security Services, which
have been criticized for their handling of the case, "could save face, Putin
can demonstrate that he's not beholden to outside pressure and Russian
scientists are given a lesson about the consequences of 'para-scientific'
contacts with foreigners."
     Mr. Cohen noted that Mr. Putin, while seeming to thumb his nose at
Washington, has worked to improve relations with nations hostile to the
United States, including Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Vietnam.
     And in meetings with leaders in China, India and Western Europe, Mr.
Putin regularly has attacked what he calls a "unipolar world" â?"one
dominated
by the United States.
     Even so, a year into the Putin era, analysts say it is hard to grasp the
direction of Russia policy. A senior Russian official was quoted last week
describing Mr. Putin's approach as "assertive but positive."
     Andrew Kuchins, director of the Russian and Eurasian program at the
Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, described Mr.
Putin's foreign policy as one of "omnidirectional friendliness," seeking aid
and understanding on a wide range of fronts as he tries to rebuild a nation
depleted by a decade of economic and social dislocation.
     Russia's hopes of building an "iron alliance" with China and India are
limited by the huge economic and military advantages enjoyed by the United
States.
     "Particularly with Russia and China, but also India, the United States
holds a great deal of leverage simply by virtue of its position as global
economic leader, and also as global military leader and senior partner in the
most powerful European and Asian alliances," Mr. Kuchins said.
     Advisers to Mr. Bush have spoken privately of getting off to a good
start with Russia if they take power next year. Mr. Bush praised Russia's
mediation role in Yugoslavia during the campaign and proposed deep cuts in
U.S. nuclear missile stocks, inviting Mr. Putin to reciprocate.
     The cuts would be designed to improve the tone of the dialogue as a Bush
administration sought Russian acquiescence in a modification of the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty to permit construction of a national
missile defense shield.
     Mr. Putin's government has shown little give on the ABM issue.
     Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, in a visit to London last week,
again pressed the British government not to cooperate with any such system.
     But Mr. Putin has approved sharp cuts in Russian military forces at
home. And while junking the agreement on Iranian arms sales, Russian
officials negotiated at length with U.S. officials on the issue last week.
     Russian officials also have tried to ease American concerns about Mr.
Putin's three-day visit to Cuba beginning Wednesday. One of the president's
top priorities will be to get Fidel Castro's government to repay Soviet-era
debts, they said.

******

#3
Baltimore Sun
December 11, 2000
To be Russian and young is cool
Trend: The nation's oldest foreign-language newspaper has begun courting the
younger members of the Russian immigrant community.
By Sarah Koenig
Sun Staff
 
 NEW YORK - Open an issue of the nation's oldest foreign-language newspaper,
and you find articles about strokes, diagrams of intestines and ads for
anti-aging pills.

Novoye Russkoye Slovo, the Russian-language daily first published in 1910,
knows its core audience: elderly immigrants who follow news in Brooklyn, Kiev
and Tel Aviv and whose health could be better.

Recently, though, the revered paper has begun courting these loyal readers'
grandchildren. Tucked between the health pages of a recent issue were an
article about the hottest band from Novosibirsk, a column titled "How to Make
Sex More Fun" (one suggestion: scatter the bed with crackers) and a hip,
metaphysical discussion of the present.

The creation of the 2-year-old section, called "Cool id," reflects a peculiar
fact of immigrant life in New York: Suddenly, somewhat unexpectedly, it has
become cool to be young and Russian.

"Traditionally the Russian community is seen as a bunch of older people
playing chess on the boardwalk," says Viktor Lushin, editor of "Cool id."
"But in reality it is now younger, more energetic and aggressive people."

These immigrants might speak English with their friends, but they listen to
Russian pop, affix Russian flag stickers to their car bumpers and hang out at
Russian clubs. "In New York colleges, some of the Russian guys, not even the
very cutest ones, are getting huge attention," Lushin says. "Maybe it's the
mythology of the Russian Mafia - they're seen as emigre Al Capones."

Drinking a $6 beer at a Russian club in Manhattan, Alex Kozhushchenko, 28,
agrees. "It's a different time. Immigrants no longer feel that they have to
fit in, to be WASP or whatever," he says.

For the paper's editor, Valery Weinberg, the push to secure young readers,
many of whom are proficient enough in English to read the Village Voice with
ease, is vital and ambitious.

"The adaptation period for youngsters is between 18 months and three years.
After that, they are really not part of the Russian-speaking community
anymore," he says. "So of course, my first thought is to attract this young
generation."

Weinberg also started a radio station four years ago, Narodnaya Volna, or
People's Wave, which has call-in shows on topics such as domestic abuse,
politics and drugs. He prefers that older people not clog the airwaves: "We
don't want senior citizens to call us. ... I love them a lot, but please,
don't call."

Weinberg's strategy is working. "Cool id" is widely read by New York's
artiest young Russians, and the People's Wave has expanded from two hours a
day to four.

About 60,000 people read Novoye Russkoye Slovo, which publishes six days a
week. The Russian-speaking community in New York numbers about 350,000
officially, though Weinberg estimates about 100,000 more are illegal
Russian-speaking immigrants here.

Housed on the fourth floor of a handsome Fifth Avenue building, the paper has
a broad mission: It covers local, national and international news, and offers
articles instructive to new Americans, such as a full-page historical column
about Benjamin Franklin and extensive job listings.

A recent edition included coverage of the presidential election impasse and
articles about a Brooklyn car-service scandal, a girl accused of killing her
parents and dumping their bodies in the East River, Internet security and
"Anti-semitism 'Canadian style,'" adapted from the New York Times. Separate
sections are reserved for the former Soviet Union (extreme cold in
Vladivostok) and Israel (a tour of a historic Tel Aviv street).

Elements such as prominently displayed personals mourning deaths in the
Russian community and serial fiction ("Spiral of Death") give parts of the
paper a homey, old-fashioned feel.

The paper's foray into youth culture is the latest in its century-long
history of obligatory transformations. In 1910, Novoye Russkoye Slovo ("new
Russian word") was written for expatriate Russian literati. The 1920s brought
"White" Russians escaping the Bolsheviks. The so-called third wave, which
started in the 1970s, consisted mostly of Jews. The paper was the only
Russian immigrant newspaper.

Even six years ago, Novoye Russkoye Slovo was the single Russian-language
paper sold at the Uzbek Newsstand, the biggest on Brighton Beach Avenue in
Brooklyn. Now customers choose from more than 20 locally published
Russian-language papers, and more than 30 imported from Russia - plus dozens
of Russian magazines.

Novoye Russkoye Slovo remains the only daily and is considered the most
serious. (Some of its competitors are devoted exclusively to dating,
advertisements or National Enquirer-style "news.") And it is the only Russian
paper with enough resources to actively court young readers.

To do so, it is deftly tapping the new Russian chic, which is in force all
over the city. The paper features the hottest night spots, such as
Manhattan's Moscow restaurant and club (where D.J. Pushkin presides over the
sound system), at the snazzy midtown address of 55th Street and Third Avenue.

Coverage of the Internet on "Cool id" is paramount. The Internet is probably
the section's toughest competition. A 2-year-old Web site called
RussianNY.com has been tailored to the young, since its founder, Leonid
Benfeld, realized the average age of his 3,500 daily users was 26.

Other sites offer new Russian writing, often of the "underground" variety -
fantasy sci-fi and cyber punk, for example. "Twelve years ago it was like
cultural isolation," says Alex Romadanov, 40, a United Nations translator and
Russian Internet guru. "Now there is no cultural border between New York and
Moscow."

RussianNY.com offers news, tickets to Russian rock concerts, and a chat room
where students and stockbrokers alike communicate in a mixture of
transliterated Russian, bastardized English and hip-hop slang.

Their casual participation in two worlds is something their parents could
only dream of. "It's something to see, how young people are participating in
the culture," says Benfeld. "They are much more proud of their ancestry than
we were back in the '70s. When I first got here, my nickname in school was
'Commie.'"

Even young Russians who only speak Russian with their parents are beginning
to return to their roots. Sometimes they want to feel the comfort of
socializing with their own; sometimes they are looking for a Russian
boyfriend or girlfriend; in some cases they are simply nostalgic.

Yakov Grinkot, a reporter for Novoye Russkoye Slovo, watched his 15-year-old
summarily reject all things Russian when they arrived in New York in 1991, he
said. Now his son has begun to take an interest in his native culture. "At
15, a child feels like he needs to be an American to have an identity. But
that return to a kernel of Russianness is very characteristic," he says.

Now age 24, Boris Grinkot gets news about Chechnya from CNN, but he has begun
trawling Napster for Russian music. "I downloaded songs from the TV cartoons
that I watched when I was 4 years old, which is somewhat demented, I guess,
but I couldn't help it," he says.

Weinberg is depending on this complicated era of pride, memory and fashion
among Russian youth. He knows he is fighting every news outlet from the New
York Times to Salon.com for these sophisticated readers.

"We survived the czar; we survived the Bolsheviks; we survived the Nazis," he
says. "And we will survive competition."

******

#4
Washington Post
December 11, 2000
Bush II Arms Control
By Jim Hoagland

National security and foreign policy have dominated George W. Bush's
tentative preparations to move into the White House. The global view of Bush
II is taking shape in Austin even as legal challenges echo across Florida.

This is partly a matter of necessity. By showcasing Colin Powell and
Condoleezza Rice as his almost-certain choices for secretary of state and
national security adviser, Bush informs the rest of the world that there will
be no delay, no early vacuum of power, in his administration.

This course is only prudent, as another Bush might say. But it is also
personal. Bush intends to make his mark in foreign affairs as well as
education, even though he talked much more about the latter during the
presidential campaign.

If he does prevail in Florida and is sworn in on Jan. 20, Bush will bring
with him to the White House the beginnings of a strategic dialogue with
Russia that will center on missile defense and deep cuts in each nation's
nuclear arsenals.

The dialogue started tentatively in April, when Rice arranged for Bush to
meet Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov in Washington. The two men said
little about their talk to avoid entangling it in the campaign. But its key
points have become known as Moscow shapes its approach to Bush II. The
conversation began convivially with Bush speaking a few sentences in Spanish
to the Russian diplomat, who was long posted in Madrid.

Bush quickly moved on to deliver a blunt assessment to Ivanov: The United
States soon would build a national missile defense to protect its territory
from rogue states or accidental launches. This was a political fact of life
that Russia and other nations had to absorb.

The system might be built faster and more robustly if he became president,
Bush hinted. But in any event, Congress would mandate it. The sense left by
Bush's careful words was that this could mean U.S. withdrawal from the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Moscow, Beijing and other capitals
describe as the foundation of international arms control.

This assessment deepened Russian concern about Bush's campaign declarations
suggesting that the era of formal arms control agreements to reduce nuclear
arsenals may be over.

The Republican nominee emphasized instead the possibility of unilateral
reductions. This would leave the United States free to develop a defensive
shield and adapt offensive forces to it. It might also lessen international
pressure on the United States to match nuclear reductions Russia must make
for budgetary reasons.

Neither outcome is desirable for Russia. On Nov. 13, President Vladimir Putin
issued a public declaration emphasizing the importance of the ABM treaty and
Russia's willingness to proceed quickly with the next administration on new
arms control talks to limit each nation to fewer than 1,500 warheads.

Ivanov then dispatched his top U.S. expert, Georgy Mamedov, to Washington for
a final round of talks with Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott on
strategic stability.

But Mamedov's main message was intended for the next administration, be it
Gore or Bush. The message, according to a senior Russian official, was an
appeal "to keep talking. Don't create an artificial pause. Don't abandon
channels that have worked. Explore seriously the proposals we are making, as
seriously as we explored the proposals for national missile defense" that the
Clintonites put forward.

Moscow and Washington could not agree on modifications to the ABM treaty that
would have permitted deployment of a limited missile defense, and Clinton
left that decision for his successor. Russia clearly fears that Bush will
move quickly toward a unilateralist nuclear strategy.

"We are prepared to work together or in parallel," the official said. The
formulation was intended to open the door for talks with the Bush team on
nuclear reductions that could be coordinated (rather than formally
negotiated) and jointly verified. "The important first step is to engage."

Arms control remains an important component of Russian-U.S. relations, he
added:

"It is still a central issue. If you believe the other side is up to
destroying or blackmailing you, you cannot work together. Arms control is
about good governance, and about saving money."

As Americans emerge from their absorption with Florida circuit courts and
county canvassing boards, they will find the world waiting to get back to
business. Russia's hope is that it will be business as usual on arms control.
But even Moscow recognizes that a new day is dawning on old theories of the
nuclear balance of terror.

******

#5
From: "Andrew Miller" <andcarmil@hotmail.com>
Subject: Russian Mystery
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000

Topic:  Russian Mystery
Title:  The Onion, Peeled

"a country which cannot escape, or does not WANT to escape, its Soviet
past."

These were the words, and the emphasis, with which ABC News ended its
Saturday evening broadcast - a story about the return of the Soviet national
anthem (a melody written to glorify Joseph Stalin, who murdered far more
Russians than Adolf Hiter) as Russia's new patriotic hymn.  The story showed
ordinary Russians on the streets of Moscow easily humming the Soviet melody
while being unable to produce the current Russian tune, Russians bedecked
with Soviet symbols including the hammer and sickle and pictures of Stalin,
with an occasional lonely voice questioning the wisdom of returning to the
music played during (indeed, written specifically to accompany) Stalin's
dance of death.  It pointed out that the driving force behind the reform was
President Vladimir Putin, a "KGB spy" interested in the glorification of the
Russian military and the centralized regime of power that, he believes, made
the former USSR awesome in the eyes of the outside world.

As the network's slogan goes, "more Americans get their news from ABC News
than from any other source."  Did President Putin give any thought to the
reaction in the world's most powerful nation, at the grass roots, before
putting his plan into action?  Was there a cost benefit analysis?  One
wonders.  Perhaps Putin plans to rectify the matter with another visit to
Larry King.

But in any case, the words that closed the report were both exhilarating and
heartbreaking because they were, at last, so very true.  Russia has become
so painfully transparent now (Larry King notwithstanding), as silly as the
images of President Putin attired in his judo costume and doing springy back
flips on the practice mat (images which the network aired as it reminded
viewers of who he is), that even TV news (AMERICAN TV news, yet) can get
Russia dead right.

Some Russians believe that the nation made a fatal error in dropping its
Soviet guard, that this lead to economic stagnation and political
humiliation.  But even if that were true, and I for one reject it utterly,
it would not describe what Russian historians will no doubt come to view as
the real down-side for Russia of its perestroika and glasnost "reforms." 
That, they will surely say, lies in the fact that Russia has lost its
mystery.  It has been, relatively speaking given the prior isolation
throughout Russian history, inundated with foreigners like me who have seen
and heard and smelled and tasted and told the world.  I can easily refute
economic and political arguments against glasnot and perestroika, against
the worst excesses of the Yeltsin regime.  But what am I to say if now we
learn that inside the riddle wrapped in the mystery surrounded by the enigma
there is an empty void?  I cannot fault Russians for mourning the loss of
mystery if that was all they had.

In the past, Russia could always cling to its mystery and to the willingness
of outsiders to project onto it their own hapless illusions, or simply their
own stupidity.  But no longer.  Even American TV news can see Russia as it
is and indeed, the only ones who cannot are apparently the Russians
themselves.  Russians hold all the "invading" foreigners at a distance
(indeed, there is ever more talk of banning them), never really get to know
or understand them, and therefore the Russians themselves have not realized
yet that the bloom is off their rose - and as the iron curtain slowly once
again descends across the continent, it is possible that they never will.

******

#6
Chernobyl -- one button ends a nightmare
By Pavel Polityuk
 
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine, Dec 11 (Reuters) - This week, at midday on Friday, a duty
engineer at Chernobyl nuclear power station will press an inconspicuous
button and begin the shutdown of the plant that caused the world's worst
civil nuclear disaster.

That is if the station is operating -- it has been forced to shut down twice
in the last three weeks due to collapsed power lines and leaking steam,
highlighting the jitters Chernobyl causes around the world.

After years of talks between Ukraine and Western countries, President Leonid
Kuchma promised in June to close Chernobyl on December 15, pledging never to
turn it back on.

The Number Four reactor at Chernobyl exploded on April 26, 1986, at 1:26 a.m.
(2226 GMT, April 25), following a controversial experiment when staff
temporarily cut off safety systems during a test of the unit's capacity.

Shortly afterwards, a series of powerful blasts caused by overheated steam
inside the reactor completely ruined the unit, sending a huge, highly
radioactive cloud across Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and much of Europe.

Thirty firemen were killed in the immediate aftermath, but thousands of
deaths have since been linked to radiation from the station. Cases of thyroid
cancer and other diseases have soared.

Fourteen years on, the last functioning reactor, Number Three, has been
churning out five percent of the country's energy, but the plant has been
dogged by minor accidents.

The process of decommissioning the plant is a long one -- it will not be
until 2008 that the last fuel rods can be removed and it will take a much
longer time for radiation to die down.

TWO HOURS TO STOP

Chernobyl operated RBMK-1000 nuclear reactors, the second major type of
reactor built in the Soviet Union, designed in the 1960s to 1970s. Fourteen
RBMK reactors are currently in service, practically all of them in Russia.

The RBMK is, in the technical jargon, a force-tube type, cooled with boiling
water (water and steam). Its nuclear reaction is graphite-moderated.

"In line with our rules, the procedure of shutting down the reactor will take
about two hours," said Yuri Neretin, Chernobyl's chief engineer.

"We have to transfer the reactor into a so-called sub-critical condition,
when a nuclear reaction becomes impossible," he said.

An engineer will give the order and a technician will press a button marked
BAZ, short for "rapid emergency defence."

This button forces slow moving 211-cadmium-boron and boron-carbide control
rods into the reactor to catch neutrons emitted by the nuclear fuel -- the
effect is to slowly stop the chain reaction happening inside.

One hour after the BAZ button has been pressed, an operator will press
another button marked AZ-5 -- "emergency defence number five."

This rapidly drops all control rods to the bottom of the reactor's active
area -- a process which takes between 1.8 and 2.5 seconds and suspends the
reaction completely.

At the same time, operators have to cut the capacity of two turbo-generators
and, later, to cut off the unit from the national power grid.

"It will be an ordinary stop procedure and we will do everything possible to
maintain nuclear safety during the process," said Vadym Hryshchenko, deputy
head of Ukraine's atomic energy regulator.

"But it will be a very morbid moment -- like burying a near relation or
friend," said Volodymyr Korovkin, director of another nuclear power station,
at Rivne in western Ukraine.

"I don't understand why we had to rebuild the station after its explosion in
1986, only to shut it down in 2000," he added.

GENERIC DEFECTS

Chernobyl officials say the number three reactor could be safely operated
until 2011 because a lot of work has been done to modernise it since 1986.

The thousands of people who work at the plant are also worried as it means
their livelihoods are about to disappear.

"The station is good and reliable. It has been working at 82 percent of its
designed capacity. This is higher than the world average and at the level of
Japanese reactors," Neretin said.

But Western experts argue that RBMK units are affected by generic defects
related to their design, their poor quality of construction and their
operating safety.

A report by the Institute for Nuclear Protection and Safety, published
several years ago, said: "It should not be forgotten that it is the whole
RBMK reactor system that raises very serious safety problems."

Nuclear experts say the emergency safety systems of the Soviet RBMK-type
reactor operating at Chernobyl and a handful of other stations in Lithuania
and Russia are not as reliable and lack multiple back-up systems.

In 1999, Chernobyl spent more than nine months offline for repairs to
pipelines in its cooling system. Thousands of faults were detected in
welding, and 260 similar welding faults had already been spotted in 1997.

Experts say that besides welding faults, RBMK reactors have some irresolvable
technical problems, especially in their safety systems.

"Even though the capacities of the safeguard systems provided for at the
design phase vary from generation to generation, they remain notoriously
limited," the report said.

******

#7
Stable Market Economy in Place in Russia-Gref.

FRANKFURT-ON-MAIN, December 11 (Itar-Tass) - A stable market economy is in
place in Russia, Minister For Economic Development and Trade Gemran Greff
said here on Monday.

He spoke at a meeting devoted to Day of the Russian Economy '2000 in
Frankfurt-on-Main.

"Ten years of reforms have not passed for nothing, a stable market economy
has formed in Russia which is starting to grow," Gref said.

"We are ready to proceed from dialogue with the West to partner relations,"
he said.

Russia today is a reviving country with a stable socio-economic and political
system, he said.

"The Russian leadership and Russian business are ready for partnership with
business circles of neighbours, are ready to open the economy of Russia,"
Gref said.

He said "Russia can further develop only as part of the civilised world".

******

#8
The Russia Journal
December 9-15, 2000
Going from glee to gloom
By Otto Latsis

The year 2000, Russia's most successful year economically for the last
three decades, isn't yet over and already the alarm bells are sounding -
from the very top.

Presidential economic adviser Andrei Illarionov, known for his liberal
economic views, described as catastrophic a promise that non-interest
related state expenses would rise by 180 billion rubles ($6.4 billion) over
the last quarter of 2000 and first quarter of 2001.

This comes on the heels of a 28 percent increase in the monetary mass over
2000, while GDP has grown by only 7 percent. This has already accelerated
inflation. Illarionov is now predicting an end to the surprisingly healthy
economic growth seen over the last year and a half.

The explanation for this sharp jump from triumphant economic forecasts to
gloomy predictions lies in the unprecedented rush of unforeseen income,
which has played a bad joke on the country.

According to Illarionov's estimates, Russia earned $30 billion more from
foreign trade in 2000 than expected. This enabled Russia to make urgent
foreign debt payments despite not receiving any loans from the
International Monetary Fund.

But most of this extra money in fact went on raising people's incomes and
increased state spending rather than on reducing the foreign debt.
Illarionov calls this a fatal mistake, saying that all additional income
should go only towards bringing down the debt.

The government hasn't been able to push tough decisions of this type
through the State Duma lower house, a situation reflected in the 2001
budget. The Duma agreed to back the budget only on condition that
additional income be divided between foreign debt payments and non-interest
related payments (incidentally, a violation of the Budget Code).

I asked Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin what he thought of Illarionov's
statements. Kudrin called Illarionov one of the most highly qualified
economists in Russia, who backs his analysis with more calculations and
international comparisons than virtually anyone else in the country.

Kudrin said he is inclined to trust Illarionov's economic forecasts, but
couldn't agree with Illarionov's statement that this past year is lost for
Russia as far as finding solutions to economic problems goes.

True, more could have been done with the huge additional financial
resources coming in, but the kind of decisions Illarionov was talking about
would have required the right political as well as economic conditions, and
above all, the full support of the Duma.

Though the elections of 1999 brought in a more pro-government Duma, this
kind of full political support has yet to materialize. The government still
has great trouble getting its main budget proposals through the Duma and
still ends up having to make significant concessions to the left-wing
factions.

Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin has also criticized the government, and
more than once. Hearing this, some observers have hastened to spread rumors
of the government's imminent dismissal, though Putin has no reason for such
a move at the moment, when the government's work has brought overall
positive results.

The media fuss over the rumored dismissal was such that Putin was obliged
at the opening of the recent C.I.S. summit to say that the government's
dismissal was not in the pipeline.

But just after this, he specifically criticized the way negotiations on
restructuring foreign debt were going. It would seem that what he was
referring to (though it wasn't directly stated) was the agreement reached
between Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and the Paris Club of creditors on
restructuring Soviet debt.

So far, this agreement has had only praise, but Putin called it
unsuccessful, saying it would have been better to reduce the debt rather
than delay payments.

This is easier said than done, especially given that no one other than
Putin himself generously ordered the extra money coming in over 2000 to be
spent on increasing pensions, public sector wages, increased defense
spending and paying off pension and wage debts. All of this contributed to
his victory in the presidential elections.

If the policy is now to make a priority of paying off foreign debt,
especially if world oil prices fall, the Kremlin will find itself having to
demonstrate the political will it likes to talk about so much. The question
is, how long will this last once the difficulties begin.
 
******

#9
Cuba next stop as Putin restores Soviet ally ties
By Aleksandras Budrys
 
MOSCOW, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Russia's President Vladimir Putin visits Cuba this
week, the communist empire's former outpost in the western hemisphere
becoming the latest stop in a campaign to restore ties with one-time allies
that remain huge debtors.

Putin's trip will be the first by a Russian leader since Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev visited Moscow's Caribbean ally in 1989. From Havana Putin
flies to Canada, passing over the United States -- an itinerary that may
raise eyebrows.

"A visit to Cuba and Canada without passing through the United States looks
somehow strange, if, of course, there won't be a surprise stop between the
two visits," said Vladimir Lukin, a deputy speaker in the Russian State Duma
or lower house of parliament and a former Russian ambassador in Washington.

"Taking into account the current (presidential election) situation in the
United States, it reminds me of a cavalry raid into the adversary's rear
lines."

DEBT TALKS AT THE FOREFRONT

Putin has taken steps to rekindle ties with old Soviet allies, both to
increase Moscow's clout abroad and to make a stab at recovering billions of
dollars in old Soviet debt.

He hosted Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz last week and also sent a
warm letter to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Earlier this year, he became
the first Russian or Soviet leader to visit North Korea.

Russia's Finance Ministry declined to disclose the total of Cuban debt Russia
had inherited from the Soviet Union, but media reports estimate it at more
than $20 billion.

"I don't think that Cuba can repay the whole debt to Russia," Lukin said.
"But there may be other ways of repaying this debt, like Russia's
participation in Cuban businesses, maybe even in tourist business."

The sides will also aim to sign an agreement on trade, which has dramatically
fallen since Soviet days when Moscow accounted for more than 60 percent of
the island's foreign trade.

The Soviet Union once supplied nearly all Cuba's oil and oil products, basic
foodstuffs, chemicals, rolled metals and machinery, while accepting the
lion's share of its sugar, citrus fruits, nickel and cobalt under deals that
subsidised Havana.

But since the countries signed agreements in 1992-93 putting trade on
commercial terms, Russia is now only Cuba's fourth largest trade partner,
behind Spain, Venezuela and Canada.

In 1999 Russia supplied more than 3.5 million tonnes of crude to Cuba and
imported more than two million tonnes of raw cane sugar, nearly half of
Cuba's harvest. But the mutual trade remains only a fraction of what it was
in Soviet times.

Russia's 1999 exports to Cuba were $471 million, imports $458 million,
according to the Foreign Ministry.

RUSSIA INTERESTED IN CUBAN NICKEL, NUCLEAR POWER, OIL

There have been signs of late that Russia is interested in taking on a more
active role in Cuba, which needs investment to modernise its creaky
Soviet-era industry.

In October Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jose Vicente Rangel said Venezuela,
Russia and Spanish firm Repsol were considering a project to reactivate a
Soviet-built oil refinery in Cienfuegos in south-central Cuba.

Russia's Trade Ministry said last July it was interested in helping Cuba
finish building the Juragua nuclear power station begun in the early 1980s
but abandoned in 1992.

On the eve of his visit, Putin ordered the government to draw up proposals on
helping Cuba finish a nickel ore processing plant, which needs about $300
million in investment.

The plant in Las Camariocas in the east of the island was started by the
Soviet Union and its allies in the 1980s, but left unfinished after the 1991
collapse of Soviet rule.

A senior official at Russian metals giant Norilsk Nickel <NKEL.RTS>, Dzhonson
Khagazheyev, will join Putin on his trip.

******

#10
INTERVIEW-Russian arms scrapping plan could start by year-end
By Martin Nesirky
 
MOSCOW, Dec 8 (Reuters) - The United States could start clearing a site in
central Russia before Christmas ready to build a huge plant to destroy
thousands of tonnes of deadly Soviet-era chemical weapons, a U.S. official
said on Friday.

Russia is committed by treaty to destroy its 40,000 tonnes of chemical
weapons -- the world's largest stockpile -- by 2007, but is seeking more
international funds to help because its own limited finances mean it might
not otherwise meet the target.

Under the U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction programme, Washington is already
spending millions of dollars helping Moscow to tackle chemical and other
weapons of mass destruction.

Adolph Ernst, the programme's manager for chemical weapons destruction, told
Reuters all was set for work to begin clearing a site near Shchuchiye in
central Russia "before Christmas" if the green light came from Washington.

"It's just the matter of getting one single sheet of paper with a signature
on it," he said, referring to the U.S. Defence Department permission his team
needs to send in ground-clearers and prepare the site for building work to
start in spring.

Ernst, who was speaking at the offices of engineering firm Parsons, the U.S.
general contractor, is in town for talks with Russian officials, including
Munitions Agency chief Zinovy Pak.

Ernst said a tender would be held to select a Russian contractor to build the
U.S.-funded plant, which with a twin Russian-financed factory would
eventually be able to neutralise 1,600 tonnes of sarin, soman and VX nerve
agent rounds a year.

Sarin was the gas a Japanese doomsday cult unleashed on the Tokyo subway in
1995, killing 12 people and injuring thousands.

RUSSIA WANTS TO STEP UP THE PACE

Under existing plans and assuming Congress backs funding, the U.S. plant
would start destroying the weapons in 2008 but Pak wants to accelerate the
process.

"He's very interested in doing things much faster than that," said Ernst. "It
is their desire to start that destruction in 2004."

This could help Russia come close to the April 29, 2007 deadline set out in
the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which seeks to rid the world of deadly
and deteriorating arms but does not control how funds are raised to do it.
Russia is already well behind schedule through lack of funds.

Stepping up the pace would cost more money sooner, and Washington would want
to see how much Russia and others chip in.

Russian arms control experts have suggested the West give Moscow fresh
billion-dollar credits or write off Soviet and Russian debts so it can afford
to destroy its chemical arms -- a task it estimates will cost $6-7 billion
over a decade or more.

Canada, Sweden, Norway and Britain are among the countries to provide money
to help Russia destroy its chemical weapons, and others are considering it.

Artillery shells, multiple rocket launchers and missile warheads containing
the nerve agents are all held near Shchuchiye. They amount to a seventh of
Russia's stockpile.

U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, who helped start the Cooperative Threat Reduction
programme, will visit the area later this month.

When the plant is working, the nerve agent will be drained from the munitions
and neutralised chemically before being mixed with molten bitumen and stored
in bunkers in metal drums. The empty rounds will be rinsed and misshapen to
avoid reuse.

"The sooner all chemical weapons are destroyed, the safer everyone will be,"
said Ernst, showing a diagram.

The first picture was of a one-cent coin with a 10-milligram drop of VX on
it, a lethal dose. The next depicted two multiple rocket launcher warheads
containing 600,000 lethal doses.

The third image was of the two warheads hidden in the kind of daypack toted
by millions of youngsters around the world.

Exploded in a sports stadium, the warheads could kill between 1,500 and
23,000 people, depending on the weather.

******

#11
Boston Globe
December 9, 2000
Trafficking flourishes on Afghan drug route
By David Filipov, Globe Staff

ON THE PYANDZH RIVER, Tajikistan - As soon as he spied his quarry, Lieutenant
Alexander Zinchenko took off his boots, rolled up his pants, and plunged into
the icy shallow rapids of the Pyandzh, toward the barren flood plain that
forms the border with war-ravaged Afghanistan.

The men on the low island in the distance had clearly crossed over from the
Afghan side.

But were they harmless herders who had strayed into Tajik territory while
searching for firewood? Or were they perhaps drug couriers probing the border
for weak spots in advance of a big shipment along the ancient Great Silk
Road, a route that has become a narcotics superhighway that supplies 72
percent of the world's heroin?

Zinchenko raised his machine gun to fire a warning shot, but the distant
figures on the low island were already dashing across the sharp, slippery
rocks to safety on the Afghan side of the border.

Zinchenko is an officer in a Russian-led border guard force that sees itself
as the first line of defense against drug trafficking from the world's
largest heroin-producing region - the poppy fields of Afghanistan. As the
drug trade wreaks havoc in Tajikistan and all of Central Asia, and
ultimately, Russia and Europe, the unit is charged with stopping it.

But outnumbered, and often outgunned, the troops have managed to halt only a
fraction of the shipments.

Four guards from the unit, of which 90 percent of the enlisted men are
Tajiks, have been killed this year in clashes with the smugglers, some of
whom carry heavy machine guns and rocket launchers. Most encounters with drug
runners end with the smugglers getting away, like the border violators on
Zinchenko's recent patrol.

Once smugglers slip past the border guards, they move toward the mountains of
Tajikistan, where anyone with a mule, a horse, or a helicopter can easily
evade detection.

The Taliban movement that now controls 95 percent of Afghanistan says it has
banned all poppy planting this season, declaring that there will be no fresh
crop next year to supply the drug trade. But few outside of Afghanistan
believe this means the end of this wildly lucrative, illicit trade on the
route smugglers have rechristened ''The Great Drug Road.''

The Taliban have not prevented smugglers from processing and transporting the
harvest out of Afghanistan earlier this year, which US and Russian officials
say is larger than last year's record crop.

''The narcotics business has been snowballing,'' said Colonel Alexander
Kostuchenko, who commands the troops on the 80-mile stretch of border along
the Pyandzh where most of the smuggling takes place. ''In six years, I
haven't seen it fall off. It has only increased under the Taliban.''

The effects of the burgeoning drug trade are everywhere. On the streets of
the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, now bustling three years after a civil war
that claimed at least 30,000 lives, local dealers quote the price of cars and
other luxury items in pounds of heroin, rather than money.

In poorer, mountainous eastern Tajikistan, a matchbox stuffed with hashish
has replaced money as holiday gift. Some officials estimate that up to 30
percent of Tajikistan's gross domestic product is generated by the drug trade.

As supply has increased, driving prices down, more addictive heroin has
increasingly replaced weaker opium as the drug of choice. Addiction has
become a problem for countries that have never had serious drug problems.
Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan each report 200,000 addicts, with 50,000 more in
Kyrgyzstan. At a sprawling street market in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, dealers slip
buyers small white envelopes containing single doses of heroin, which cost
less than $2.

Medical facilities can't handle the resulting increase in hepatitis and AIDS.
Russian health officials fear that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, will
spread to 2 million intravenous drug users there by 2002.

This year, Russian police have seized more than 1,500 pounds of heroin, which
police admit is as much a sign of the booming drug trade as of improvement in
law enforcement techniques; a few years ago, total annual seizures were
counted in grams.

US officials estimate that the opium crop in Afghanistan increased by 25
percent in 2000 over 1999, to 3,656 metric tons of opium, enough to make 365
metric tons of heroin. Russian estimates of the crop are nearly twice that
amount. Even if the Taliban are serious about ending the drug trade,
officials fear the supply will not dry up for years.

For many in Tajikistan, the drug trade is the best source of income in a
country that suffered a devastating civil war and now is struggling through a
drought that has left many of its 5.7 million people, in the words of US
Ambassador Robert Finch, ''on the verge of starvation.''

In Afghanistan, two pounds of heroin is worth $700 to $900. The price goes up
to $1,500 in the Tajik capital, and soars to up to $40,000 in Moscow. In
Europe, the market price is $150,000.

Many observers believe a power-sharing deal that allowed members of
Tajikistan's Islamic opposition to enter government has had the effect of
allowing warlords to legitimize their shares of the drug trade. A recent
crackdown found 140 pounds of heroin in a car belonging to the Tajik
ambassador in Kazakhstan, and another 20 pounds of heroin in the garage of a
Tajik trade representative.

Officials say the drug trade has been used to finance Islamic insurgencies in
Central Asia. Bolot Janukazov, a senior Kyrgyz security official, said the
militant Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, believed to have bases in
Taliban-controlled parts of Afghanistan and in Tajikistan's mountains,
controls 70 percent of the region's drug trafficking.

Regional governments, joined by the United States, China, and Russia, have
tried to put aside their differences to fight the drug trade. With UN help,
Tajikistan formed a drug enforcement agency to curtail the illicit flow.

But critics say the increased law enforcement effort only pushes the
narco-barons to be more fierce and resourceful. A March report on the Central
Asian drug trade by the Carnegie Foundation estimated that drug dealers pay
off half of the customs officials in Kyrgyzstan. Russian officers assume the
same is true of many of their Tajik colleagues.

The Russian guards say this is why they burn the drugs they confiscate,
rather than turn them over to the Tajiks. Privately, Russian officers say
they fear the drugs would go back on the market.

Tajik officials counter that the Russian forces provide drug traffickers with
planes and helicopters. In 1997, 12 Russian servicemen based in Dushanbe were
caught trying to transport 17 pounds of narcotics to Moscow.

Lieutenant Colonel Pyotr Gordiyenko of the Russian border guard adamantly
denies that his troops are involved, although he says he understands that
many people might wonder. The way he sees it, each shipment of heroin kept
from the market means thousands of Russians saved from addiction - and that's
a big motivation for soldiers who earn less in a month than the price of a
plane ticket to Moscow.

''Foreign journalists often can't understand how our officers can confiscate
thousands of dollars' worth of drugs and not take any,'' Gordiyenko said.
''They can't understand why an officer would work for the border guards.''

That question did come to mind during a recent visit to Lieutenant
Zinchenko's post on the Pyandzh River, where 25 Tajik enlisted men and their
Russian officers patrol a five-mile border stretch where many of the illicit
crossings take place.

The post's lights had not worked for days because there was no fuel. Neither
did the battery-operated surveillance equipment. There was barely enough
diesel for the detachment's battered Russian-made jeeps to make their rounds.

''The other side has Chevrolet Blazers and Western radios,'' Zinchenko said.
''We get by on enthusiasm, and on the love of the hunt.''

*******

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