#11
Russia's Zhirinovsky learns to love America
December 10, 2001
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a firebrand ultra-nationalist Russian leader is dropping his fierce anti-American stance -- the political equivalent of a leopard changing its spots.
He told the private NTV station's "Hero of the Day" program Monday that President Vladimir Putin's handling of the conflict in Afghanistan had convinced him Russia could work in partnership with its former Cold War foes.
Zhirinovsky, in the past an outspoken scourge of "U.S. imperialism" who angered many in the West by making a series of high-profile trips to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, said his Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) would back the U-turn at a congress Thursday.
"I'll tell everybody that LDPR does not have any anti-American and anti-Western moods and slogans.
"I'm not afraid of a coup, because our party is not a Communist party. We've been told for 50 years by the Communists that the United States is our enemy which has surrounded us with its bases and wants to attack us.
"...It's propaganda. Americans do not want Russians to die, and Russians don't want (Americans to die)," he said.
In October, at the start of the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan, Zhirinovsky said the military operation was simply a cover for future attacks against Russia.
On Monday, he compared Russia's two-year conflict in its breakaway Chechnya region with the battle to oust the Taliban from Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 1 attack on the United States.
"There is a common enemy, an enemy of all of us. So why should Russia and the United States, two great powers, continue to have cold relations?" asked Zhirinovsky, a deputy speaker of parliament.
Arguably Russia's most brazen politician, Zhirinovsky has built a career on outlandish statements that have seen him branded a racist, an anti-Semite and a war-monger. But his unorthodox views have proven popular with voters.
Although the influence of his LDPR has waned since its mid-1990s heyday, the party won a better-than-expected eight percent of the vote in December 1999 elections, giving it 17 seats in the 450-member State Duma lower house of parliament.
"We have to get used to the idea that the Cold War does not exist any longer," Zhirinovsky said of his policy change.
"We will have a common army -- two million of NATO and 500,000 of our army. This will be enough to put everything in order all over the world. We will have common military exercise and a common military doctrine, there will be no war."
Next Article