Johnson's Russia List
#5600
15 December 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com
A CDI Project
www.cdi.org

[Note from David Johnson:
1. AFP: US set ABM withdrawal date shortly after Bush-Putin summit:
official.
2. New York Times: Celestine Bohlen, In Chechnya, Truth Is a Dangerous Goal.
(re Anna Politkovskaya)
3. The Guardian (UK): Baron who beat the sheikhs. Interview: Mikhail 
Khodorkovsky, chief executive of Yukos oil group.
4. The Russia Journal: Andrei Piontkovsky, Same old story for Russian
market reform.
5. The Russia Journal (US edition): Matt Taibbi, Missing the point on
Russia's oil cuts.
6. RFE/RL: Tony Wesolowsky, USSR Breakup: Historian Explains Phenomenon Of 
'Soviet Nostalgia'. (Stephen Cohen)
7. New York Times: Sabrina Tavernise, Novelist Chronicles the Intrigues of 
the New Moguls. (Yuliya Latynina)
8. Jamestown Foundation Monitor: PUTIN RULES OUT EXTENDING PRESIDENTIAL
TERM.
9. Interfax: Russian Communist leader attacks Russia's policy on nuclear
forces, NATO.
10. Reuters: Rumsfeld says to reward Caucasus for Afghan help.
11. AP: Scrapped Treaty May Benefit Russia.] 

*******

#1
US set ABM withdrawal date shortly after Bush-Putin summit: official
AFP
December 15, 2001 
 
The United States set December 13 as the date it would announce its 
withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia shortly after 
the last month's summit between presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, 
a senior US official said.

But the date was kept secret from all but a very small number of top Bush 
aides and even from the Russians until December 7, when the president 
informed Putin in a telephone call, the official said.

The official would not say exactly when Bush chose December 13 as the 
announcment date, but said it had been decided after the November 16 summit 
and before Secretary of State Colin Powell departed on a trip to Europe and 
Asia on December 3.

"The date of the 13th was set before (Powell) left," the official told 
reporters on condition of anonymity.

The official confirmed that Powell's trip -- during which he met with Russian 
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov three times and Putin once -- was never intended 
to be used as a platform to negotiate with Moscow over the treaty.

"That's right," the official said, when asked if Powell had intended to 
discuss a possible compromise. "The decision on 'Are we walking away (from 
the ABM treaty) or not?' was already made."

Instead, the official said, Powell's trip was part of a complex diplomatic 
effort to ensure that Russia -- which believes the treaty is a cornerstone of 
global stability -- would not react angrily to formal notification that the 
United States would withdraw from the pact in six months time.

The official said Washington was deeply concerned that the Russians might 
alter previous statements on the matter in which Moscow had said US 
withdrawal from the treaty would be a mistake, but one they could live with.

In addition, the United States worried Russia might not agree to a proposed 
sharp cut in offensive nuclear warheads, which Washington wanted to announce 
along with the withdrawal to allay global concerns about a post-ABM 
US-Russian arms race.

In an unusually detailed outline of the events leading up to the 
announcement, the official said that Powell had told Ivanov at a meeting 
December 4 in Bucharest that Bush would soon notify Moscow of his plans to 
withdraw from the treaty,

"By Bucharest, the secretary was able to tell Ivanov that it was coming, but 
did not give him the date," the official said, adding that Washington felt 
the exact timing should be given to Putin directly by Bush.

Powell told Ivanov generally of the decision to give the Russians time to 
prepare a response, the official said.

"The idea was 'We are going to tell you this so that when the times comes, 
you're ready," the official said. "These kinds of things we've heard you say 
(in the past), will these be the kind of things you will say in public at 
that time?"

Ivanov then reported back to Moscow that Bush's announcement was imminent and 
three days later, on December 7, Powell and his Russian counterpart met 
again, this time in Brussels.

There was "a little bit more context (in Brussels) because by then Ivanov had 
heard back from Moscow," the official said.

Ivanov told Powell that Russia would not change its previous stance regarding 
US withdrawal from ABM, but that the exact language was unclear and that 
there was no decision yet on the offensive weapons cuts.

Powell was still not able to give Ivanov the date of the announcement as Bush 
had not yet telephoned Putin with the news, the official said.

That phone call was made later in the day and by December 10, when Powell saw 
Ivanov again and met Putin in Moscow, he was able to tell them exactly what 
Bush would say December 13, the official said.

Powell was then given details of the Russian response and Putin told him that 
he would meet the "range" of offensive weapons cuts proposed by Bush.

*******

#2
New York Times
December 15, 2001
In Chechnya, Truth Is a Dangerous Goal
By CELESTINE BOHLEN

Anna Politkovskaya doesn't think of herself as a war reporter. When 
colleagues all over the world rushed this fall to cover the war in 
Afghanistan, she wasn't even tempted. "I looked inside myself, and I 
understood I had no desire to go," she said during a recent visit to New York.

And yet, for the last two years, Ms. Politkovskaya, who writes for the 
Russian weekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta, has been in the thick of a war, the 
latest one waged by Russia in the southern region of Chechnya. Often she has 
been a solitary witness to a conflict in which there is no victory and no 
defeat, just a steady stream of misery and death, brutality and betrayal.

Other reporters, mostly foreign, have been to Chechnya intermittently to 
write about the devastation in the capital, Grozny; the atrocities in 
villages where Russian troops have run amok; or about underpaid, untrained 
Russian soldiers.

But the difference is that Ms. Politkovskaya is working for a Russian 
newspaper at a time when the Russian government has actively discouraged any 
independent reporting on the war. As a result, most other Russian reports are 
sporadic and tilted toward the official line. But she has gone back to 
Chechnya again and again, trying to perfect a method of war reporting that is 
difficult in the best of circumstances: getting both sides of the story. 

"I have to go because nobody else is going, and if nobody goes, then no one 
will know what is happening," Ms. Politkovskaya said. "Even when you write 
what is happening, people don't believe you. But I figure if I have convinced 
10 people of the truth, then I have done my job."

She has been publicly lambasted by government spokesmen and handled roughly 
by the state security police. Her editors have received phone calls from the 
Kremlin, and television producers have suddenly (and inexplicably) canceled 
her appearances on state-supported stations. Yet she has continued to report, 
even though, as she says, "In my soul, I am not a war reporter."

Since the fall of 1999, she has made 26 trips to Chechnya; her last was in 
September. If it weren't for a particular widely reported death threat from a 
persistent major in the Russian Interior Ministry forces, she would probably 
be there now, tromping through the snow that covers the Caucasus Mountains, 
following up on the letters she gets from people who want her to tell their 
story.

But instead she is in limbo. The death threats from the major, whom she 
accused of assisting in murder and torture in Chechnya, forced her to leave 
Russia for a time. She and her editors have tried to file charges against 
him, but so far, she said, no case has been brought. 

She was in the United States promoting her book, "A Dirty War: A Russian 
Reporter in Chechnya," translated by John Crowfoot (Harvill Press) and 
distributed in the United States by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 

Ms. Politkovskaya, 43, a tall, thin woman with glasses and graying hair, was 
not one of the many Russian journalists who covered the first war, from 1994 
to 1996, when there was still public sympathy in Russia for the Chechen 
independence fighters. That was before the region collapsed into lawlessness, 
and reporters, among hundreds of others, were kidnapped by bandit- warlords. 
In those years, she was writing about orphans, prisoners, the handicapped and 
others whose situations — taboo subjects in the Soviet era — only got
worse 
in the early years of capitalism and democracy.

In Chechnya, her focus from the start was civilians, innocent people caught 
in a nightmarish conflict. She actually began with the dead, writing about 
the bodies of Russian soldiers from the first war, which, because of 
mismanagement and greed, were still unidentified years later at a laboratory 
in Rostov-on-Don.

Most of her reporting is about ordinary citizens — Chechens, Russians, 
Dagestani and Ingush — who were made helpless by war. (The last two groups, 
from regions bordering Chechnya, have also been dragged into the nightmare.) 
She has written articles about Chechen refugees who live huddled in unheated 
railway cars, of a conductor from St. Petersburg who gives them her paltry 
bonus, of a local bureaucrat who comes to visit them in a silk tie, white 
shirt and perfectly polished shoes.

Ms. Politkovskaya's most famous tale was of the ordeal of the inhabitants of 
an old-age home in Grozny who were prevented for a time from leaving the 
bombed-out city by both Chechen and Russian officials, whom she described as 
equally cynical and corrupt. In this case, as in others, she led a one-woman 
crusade, publishing her telephone number to rally support and money from 
strangely indifferent readers. She makes no apologies for overstepping the 
bounds of the objective reporter: her mission involves more than facts.

"My goal is to knock on doors until someone listens," she said. But in the 
last chapter of her book, she acknowledges how hard that can be, even in her 
own circles in Moscow. "Everyone is tired of this war," she writes. "When you 
tell even very close friends and relatives on your return about that other 
world, you are met with disbelief . . . `There she goes again, making up 
these hellish stories.' "

Last February she traveled to the mountainous region of Vedeno to investigate 
reports of Russian troops holding Chechen prisoners in deep pits. After 
interviewing the villagers, she went to the local Russian base to see the 
commanding officer, who, to her amazement, told her the truth. "I simply 
asked the commander why the soldiers behaved this way," she said. "This is 
ordinary journalism: you ask one side, and then the other."

As she left the base, she was intercepted by Russian intelligence officers, 
who accused her of spying. She was held for three days, during which she was 
verbally abused and physically threatened — she was deliberately placed in 
the line of fire — and was finally released only because two villagers who 
saw her being arrested informed Memorial, a Russian human rights group. 

"When they released me, they said it was because there was a big noise in 
Moscow," she said. "I was lucky, because the worst in Chechnya is to 
disappear." She said she later learned that the two men who saved her were 
denounced and killed.

Now that Russia has joined the United States' war against international 
terrorism, there are signs that the government is looking for ways to 
negotiate an end to the war in Chechnya. As a gesture of solidarity with its 
Western allies, it has sent emergency aid to Afghanistan to help civilians 
and has obliquely acknowledged that civilian casualties should be avoided.

But still, Ms. Politkovskaya has her doubts about the lessons learned in 
Chechnya. "In our society, there is still a traditional view: `One life more, 
one life less, what's the difference,' " she said. "It requires a certain 
healthiness of the whole society to think differently. And no society has 
ever become healthy through war."

*******

#3
The Guardian (UK)
December 15, 2001
Baron who beat the sheikhs 
Interview: Mikhail Khodorkovsky, chief executive of Yukos oil group 

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oil tsar and driving force behind a recent 
stand-off with Opec members which has sent oil prices sliding, wanted to talk 
in the Promenade lounge of the Dorchester hotel in London. Where else? In the 
1970s this temple of opulence was the meeting place for oil sheikhs eager to 
show off their new-found wealth.

Now Khodorkovsky is signalling Russia's power and confidence, in London this 
week to launch an Open Russia Foundation at Somerset House. The 10m 
charitable fund aims to build cooperation between Russia and the west; Lord 
Rothschild and Henry Kissinger have joined the board - just the kind of men 
Khodorkovsky is keen to be associated with.

The chief executive of the oil group Yukos is one of a handful of oligarchs 
or robber barons, according to their critics, who have gained greatly in the 
transition from communism to capitalism.

He has also benefited from a two-year run of sky-high crude prices, 
endangered until recently by Russia's refusal to play ball with Opec. Moscow 
has agreed to slice 150,000 barrels a day off its exports, but industry 
experts see it as a political manoeuvre to enable Opec to save face.

Domestic assets
Khodorkovsky says he remains opposed to cuts. Industry watchers say output 
drops in the first quarter because of the Siberian winter so Russia is not 
promising anything that would not happen anyway. Meanwhile, Opec remains 
undecided whether non-cartel members have done enough to justify its going 
ahead with curbs to its production and oil prices remain at $18 a barrel, a 
far cry from the $30 they reached earlier this year.

Even in the grandeur of the Dorchester tea room, there is little flashy or 
ostentatious about Mr Khodorkovsky in his sober dark suit and white shirt. 
Nor is there a bodyguard to be seen. The 38-year-old executive is escorted by 
a press officer and interpreter but his own solid build suggests he can look 
after himself.

Is he uncomfortable about being so affluent in a country where poverty is 
widespread? "A wealthy person is not very comfortable in Russia, although 
where I live in Moscow public attitudes are much more liberal than anywhere 
else in the country. In Europe also, the wealthy are not loved: the situation 
is different in the US. There people are not envious of the rich; they just 
want to become wealthy themselves."

He has a large house, but says lots of children to help fill it up. He lists 
his other domestic assets: a BMW saloon and his wife's four-wheel drive plus 
a family minivan.

The greater part of my money is in shares, mainly Russian companies, 
especially the ones I am involved with. I have some money in the bank and 
primarily, once again, it is in Russia.

Khodorkovsky boasts that he was the first Russian to obtain agreement from 
the local authorities to open a bank account abroad. "When I first asked they 
did not know how to respond," he laughs.

He was not always a capitalist. He began his career in 1987 after graduating 
from the Moscow Institute for Chemistry and Technology as deputy head of the 
Komsomol (Young Communist League) department of the capital's Frunze district.

He went on to become director of the centre for scientific and technical 
creative work of young people (NTTM), which was used to help found the first 
private commercial bank in the then Soviet Union.

By 1990 the Innovation bank, as it was called, had bought NTTM and changed 
its name to Menatep-invest. Khodorkovsky briefly served as a deputy Russian 
fuel and energy minister and by 1997 Menatep had captured an 85% stake in 
Yukos and 54% of Eastern Oil.

The exact way in which Khodorkovsky, the son of two factory workers, became 
so powerful and wealthy is unclear. He had some famous rows with foreign 
investors over corporate governance but has since become a favourite with 
many western finance houses.

He does not deny a chequered past. "We started out as robber barons, but you 
have got to understand that rules were hazy in those early days and we 
changed ourselves as we became familiar with what was expected of us."

Not the cleanest
"It is obvious now that if I was doing these things again I would do them 
differently. I don't think I actually violated the law but it took me some 
time to realise that above and beyond the law there were also ethical laws. 
This all might seem obvious now but in the 1990s it was not always so."

Mr Khodorkovsky said his hero, if he had one, would probably be John D 
Rockefeller, the founding father of Standard Oil and the American oil 
industry. "John D Rockefeller was not the cleanest of people, his son was a 
bit better and his grandson perfectly decent. It took 100 years to get from A 
to B and one Harvard University professor said I had got there in a few 
years. I possibly embrace John D, his son and grandson all wrapped up 
together."

Although he speaks in soft, measured tones, Khodorkovsky did not balk at 
pushing his government into defying Opec calls for Russia to introduce 
production cuts that might have hurt his oil interests. He is vehement that 
the Middle East cartels goal to push prices up to $25 per barrel is 
unrealistic and should be abandoned. "People want to see the world in black 
and white all the time. Opec has a target of keeping oil around $25-$28 per 
barrel and wants to manage that price with short-term reductions [in output]. 
It says: Are you with us or are you not with us?"

Actually the situation is completely different. Russia feels the volatility 
on the oil markets and recognises there is a need to reduce that volatility. 
But at the same time we don't want to hurt relations with our customers or 
lose market share.

Does Russia want more dialogue with non-Opec producers? Is it considering a 
rival cartel? "I believe Russia needs to reach agreement with all countries 
but its not an anti-Opec initiative. Countries such as Russia and Norway are 
in a similar situation and we discuss [oil price] problems with the European 
Union. These countries could speak with one voice but there is no need to 
create a permanent grouping. One should not try to control the market from 
one point and we could not anyway because the world resists such actions 
quite easily. You might push the price of oil down for a bit but then it 
would shoot back up again."

While Yukos and Russia concentrate on increasing oil production 500,000 extra 
barrels are scheduled for next year others have been worrying about the end 
of hydrocarbons.

Khodorkovsky is not much interested in solar or other forms of renewable 
energy that increasingly attract the attention of western firms. "Our society 
is not yet wealthy enough to start moving in that direction. We don't produce 
much carbon dioxide. We are not near our Kyoto [protocol target] level."

The estimated $3bn surpluses created over the past two years by Yukos, 
Russia's second-largest oil group, will be ploughed back into oil and gas 
developments. A small part has already been spent buying a 22% stake in 
Kvaerner.

Yukos's easy access to cash following its latest annual profits of $3.3bn has 
helped it fast-forward a deal to purchase two of Kvaerner's subsidiaries, 
both with sizeable operations in Britain.

The Yukos connection with Kvaerner came after the early 1990s when 
post-Soviet economic turmoil left Khodorkovsky limping behind the west. 
"Between 1992 and 1999 the Russian oil industry did not see any capital 
investment, so parts of it were lost. They were not up to speed, like a 
journalist who has not written an article for a long time. That is why we 
contacted [US oil services group) Schlumberger to help with new wells."

This year it did a similar deal with Kvaerner and says it took the equity 
holding in the Oslo-based group to cement its joint ventures with the 
company. Through buying the two Kvaerner subsidiaries it has about 400 staff 
in Britain, with offices in London, Aberdeen and Stockton-on-Tees. It wants 
to revive the famous engineering brand John Brown, which was borne by one of 
the companies before it was bought by Trafalgar House and then Kvaerner.

Could more Yukos investment money end up in Britain? There is a small unit 
here looking for worldwide upstream opportunities and Khodorkovsky said a 
trading arm would soon be established. As for forming an investment group 
similar to the one set up by Sibneft to ensure greater financial 
transparency, forget it.

The company had moved far from the dark days when it battled with US 
investors over corporate governance. "We now have 70 PricewaterhouseCoopers 
employees working at Yukos all the time and they are in charge of auditing. 
After we dealt with the problems of [US investor] Mr Dart in 1999 no one has 
been accusing us of not being transparent with investors."

There will be foreign expansion in the years to come but hostile takeovers 
are pretty much ruled out. For us the upstream focus will be on a small 
number of countries and we would naturally want to work with a partner. But 
the opportunities would have to be at least as attractive as Europe. 
Downstream we would concentrate on eastern and central Europe.

Khodorkovsky says he does not know how to relax. He is standing up to leave, 
not having got round to ordering a cup of tea. His view on what takes someone 
to the top of business? "You need to be a bit of a fanatic."

The CV
Born: June 26, 1963
Education: Moscow Institute for Chemistry and Technology; Moscow Plekhanov 
Institute of Economics
Career: Deputy head of the Komsomol department of Frunze district in Moscow 
(1987). Director of the centre for scientific and technical creative work for 
young people (NTTM) (1987-1989). Founded first private commercial bank in 
Soviet Union, Innovation bank for scientific and technical progress (1988). 
Innovation bought NTTM and bank changed name to Menatep (1990). Deputy fuel 
and energy minister (1993). Menatep bought 85% stake in Yukos and 54% stake 
in Eastern Oil (1997).
Family: Married with four children
Interests: Reading science fiction, particularly books by Arthur C Clarke 

*******

#4
The Russia Journal
December 14-20, 2001
Same old story for Russian market reform
By ANDREI PIONTKOVSKY

Russia’s most prominent political-business figures were baring their
private lives and the products of their bodily functions long before it was
done by the sorry guinea pigs from the popular "Za Steklom" show, the
Russian equivalent to Big Brother. The politicians and businessmen were at
it at least from 1997, the birth year of the first great information war.

Back then, Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky used their TV channels to
tell us in great detail, with documents and diagrams to help, how Vladimir
Potanin stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the state coffers.
Potanin did not have his own TV channel, but he did have many newspapers,
which he put to work telling us in convincing detail about his colleagues’
similar acts of theft.

Tasteless flaunting

It never occurred to anyone to deny these scandalous revelations. On the
contrary, Berezovsky told the Financial Times: "We hired [Anatoly] Chubais.
We invested a lot of money and assured [then-President] Boris Yeltsin’s
victory. Now we have to get government posts and enjoy the fruits of our
victories."

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was just as frank when he said to Nezavisimaya Gazeta:
"The most profitable business in Russia is politics. We met in our circle
and drew lots to see who would get to join the government. Potanin was the
first, but he was so busy looking after the interests of his Onexim. Now,
other people are getting their turn."

But how could they have been, and still be, so flagrantly shameless? In
part, it is the nouveaux riches’ love of tasteless flaunting. On the lower
rungs are raspberry-colored jackets and fat gold chains, while on the upper
rungs, it is: "We control half the economy and appoint ministers." Partly,
these people at the top wanted to incite fear and convince the public of
their might and immunity from punishment. And then there was one other
factor – the matrons of ancient Rome thought nothing of going around naked
in front of their slaves, because they did not even see the slaves as people.

This shameless merger of Power and Money is more than just a moral or legal
problem now. Diverting this amount of budget money to private companies has
created above all a macroeconomic problem. The formula "Money-Power-Money"
has made big business dependent on budget money for a narcotic high. The
country’s economic life is not about developing production, but about
establishing control over financial flows.

This is not new in Russian history. The Marquis de Custine, in his travel
memoirs about Russia, related how Tsar Nicholas I complained to him,
"Everyone in the country steals except me, and I cannot do anything about it."

Chekists vs. the Family

Lonely and helpless President Vladimir Putin is in an even more tragic
situation than Nicholas I. Unlike Nicholas, Putin did not accede to the
Russian throne by birth, but was put there by the country’s most notorious
thieves.

This is why, when he timidly and imploringly asks, "Where’s the money?" the
only response is the knowing smirks on his collaborators’ faces.

These same collaborators continue to organize new rounds of public
stripteases from time to time, baring the intimate financial details of
each others’ lives for us all to see. Now, for example, the remains of the
vanishing intelligentsia have their faces pressed against the Kremlin
glass, eyes glued on the great race between the Family clan and the
Lubyanka clan. And as they watch, they slip in quotes from Joseph Brodsky
such as "But thieves are dearer to me than the drinkers of blood."

But please, gentlemen, in what way are today’s "clean-handed, cool-headed
and warm-hearted" Chekists so particularly deserving of the label
"bloodsuckers?" It wasn’t they, but the Family, who unleashed two PR
Chechen massacres to get their appointee elected president, while assuring
us that this was the way to reinvigorate the Russian Army.

And just who are the tyrants and crushers of freedom? It wasn’t the
Chekists, but a crack team of super-liberal marauders from SPS (Alfred
Kokh, Boris Jordan, Anatoly Chubais, Boris Nemtsov and Irina Khakamada) who
carried out the purge at NTV.

The last bastion?

These are not leather-garbed Bolsheviks, shooting the Deripaskas and
Abramoviches of 1918 just for their class origins and then distributing the
fruits of their plunder to an oppressed world proletariat and the
downtrodden toiling masses of the East.

They are respectable people, who own Mercedes, wear Cartier and Cardin,
possess all the other attributes of the market economy and thirst to
multiply these attributes. These worthy people are continuing the cause of
market reforms in Russia in the spirit of their predecessors.

And do you really think that the Misha 2-percents are the last bastion of
liberal values in Russia? Do you really believe that we should answer the
call of Yeltsin’s new son-in-law and take to the streets to defend these
sacred pillars of democracy?

(The writer is director of the Center for Strategic Research.)
 
*******

#5
The Russia Journal (US edition)
December 14-20, 2001
Missing the point on Russia's oil cuts
By Matt Taibbi

After all this time, Western reporters based in Russia still make - make
repeatedly, as a matter of fact - the cardinal mistake of taking Russian
official statements at face value. Whenever the government announces that
it is going to crack down on corruption, half the papers in the world lead
their "international" sections the next day with news of Russia's imminent
"anti-corruption drive." Very often, Russian stocks actually rally at this
news. 

Two months later, of course, that same official who announced the
corruption drive is occupying the top slot in the latest Interpol wanted
poster, having embezzled the entire budget of the Mari El territory to
Nauru island. This news always manages to escape the attention of editors,
however.

The latest screw-up on this score was much more profound. It revolved
around Russia's much-publicized flip-flop over the issue of cuts in crude
oil exports. 

When this story first came out, it should have been a sensation. Russia
last month announced that, in response to requests from the OPEC cartel
that it join Mexico and Norway among non-OPEC nations to cut exports by
some 500,000 barrels a day, it was going to cut a mere 30,000 barrels. This
was an outright slap in the face of OPEC; Russia planned to cut about that
much anyway, and in any case, 30,000 was far short of the 150,000 barrels
OPEC was hoping Russia alone would cut.
 
A major event

Russia's hesitation on the reduction matter was nothing short of a massing
of tanks on the oil border - if they had actually followed through with
their threat, a full-scale oil price war could have ensued. By almost any
standard, this would have been one of the major events in the history of
the petroleum business in the past 30 years, and might have revolutionized
the world economy. 

Last week, Russia backed off. Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, apparently
bowing to pressure from, among others, oil giant Yukos, announced that
Russia was going ahead with the 150,000 cut. Oil prices were safe for the
time being. The incident was widely reported in a tone that suggested that
Russia, having flirted with a dangerous adventure, had finally come back to
its senses.

The mistake reporters made with this story was to actually take Kasyanov at
face value, and to misinterpret the meaning of the first threatened
nonreduction. The fact is - and anyone associated with the Russian oil
business will say the same thing -that Russia has never intended to cut
crude production. And it never will. In an international community of quota
cheaters, Russia is, hands-down, the biggest cheater of all. It has never
once intentionally cut production in its entire history, and it doesn't
intend to now.

Which is not to say that Russia's oil producers are not interested in
maintaining high prices. They are. The question has been whether they want
to be publicly supportive of that effort, even as they continue to
overproduce, or whether they want to achieve their higher prices by
breaking the OPEC nations and forcing them to take the burden of cuts on
themselves. 

In other words, the real story a month ago wasn't that Russia was making a
policy shift by defying OPEC; it was that it was finally admitting that it
was defying OPEC. Conversely, the decision last week to "go along" with the
reduction did not mean that Russia was really going to go along; what it
meant was that the country's leadership had decided to lie, for the sake of
high prices. 
In describing the state of Yukos, Andrew Jack of the Financial Times
actually came close to describing the hand Russia is holding in the oil arena:

"With a substantial cash pile and low production costs, many analysts
believe that it [Yukos] could have sat out a price war, reaping the
benefits as a "free-loader" once OPEC was ultimately forced to cut output
regardless, further swelling Russia's revenues."

Face value

But Jack and other writers continued to report the announced cuts at face
value, even adding the convincing caveat that Russia would have been likely
to cut that much anyway, as it does every winter:
"It was, as the Moscow brokerage United Financial Group dubbed it, 'a
virtual cut,' allowing Russia to 'make a PR benefit out of its winter
reality.' It was also the result of a broad consensus between the oil
companies and the government, which do not always see eye to eye.
"The output cut itself represents just 5 percent of Russia's production.

But it has also only been pledged for the first quarter of next year, and
is almost identical to the likely drop in exports that happens every winter
during that period. That drop reflects the impact of the severe Siberian
winter weather on production levels, logistical difficulties in shipping
oil abroad from stormy and frozen ports, and a rise in domestic demand for
high-margin refined products."

Reporting like this completely misses the point of what happened last week.
A month ago, Russia was ready for war with OPEC. That is the only possible
interpretation of admitting publicly what you intended to do privately in
any case - to actually cause a depreciation in prices, apparently with the
hope of breaking the Saudis and the other OPEC countries. It was, as one
analyst put it, Russia announcing that it was switching from an "oil
producer to oil consumer economy."

 Oil consumer countries, like the United States, benefit from low prices.
It appeared to be a vote of confidence by the Russian government in the
rest of the country's industry to openly slug it out with OPEC, banking on
the hope that the rest of the economy would profit enough to keep the
budget afloat until OPEC made its cuts. 

But now, Russia retreated. And the obvious question is: Why? What happened
in the course of the last month to sway Putin and Kasyanov from what
appeared to be a monumental decision last month?

 None of this was addressed anywhere in the Western press. It was as though
the issue revolved solely around the willingness of the oil producers to go
along with cuts that might reduce revenues - wheras in fact it was oil
companies like Yukos that were most directly interested in not confronting
OPEC openly. Instead of "To lie or not to lie," what we got was, "To cut or
not to cut."

Though there are many people (including myself) who believe that it would
be a great thing for Russia to intentionally enter into a price war, there
is also the fact that it might simply happen of its own accord. That would
be the result of an inability or an unwillingness among the Russian oil
companies to police each other at all.

It may be that Russia's oil powers are simply so greedy and so disorganized
that they would be unable to cut production even if they wanted to. If this
is true, and I think it is, it could start a price war, if reporters chose
to advertise the situation. But judging by their performance last week,
that is never going to happen. All Russia will ever have to do is say it is
going to make a cut - and with reporters like these, that will be as good
as the real thing.

(Matt Taibbi is editor of the Moscow-based eXile alternative newspaper.)

*******

#6
USSR Breakup: Historian Explains Phenomenon Of 'Soviet Nostalgia' (Part 3)
By Tony Wesolowsky

To some, the passing of the Soviet Union 10 years ago hardly seems an event 
worth mourning. The USSR left a grim legacy. The one-party rule system 
erected there left millions dead or rotting in the gulag. Millions more lived 
in a state of fear and oppression as the state monitored nearly every aspect 
of their lives. But was it really as bad as some think? In the last of a 
three-part series, RFE/RL correspondent Tony Wesolowsky puts that question to 
U.S. Sovietologist Stephen Cohen. 

Prague, 14 December 2001 (RFE/RL) -- In a speech delivered in 1983, former 
U.S. President Ronald Reagan famously referred to the Soviet Union as the 
"evil empire." Given the USSR's often brutal and bloody history, it was a 
title many found fitting.

But Stephen Cohen, a Soviet historian at New York University, says the 
majority of the people living in the Soviet Union -- particularly in Russia 
-- didn't see their country that way. Like the citizens of most countries, 
they tended to see the good in their homeland. They pointed to the Soviet 
Union's rapid industrialization and cities such as the famous steel-making 
center of Magnitogorsk, which was built from the ground up according to 
Stalin's first Five-Year Plan. The Soviet Union also boasted many 
technological and scientific achievements, and was the first nation to put a 
man in space in 1961. And Soviet citizens also remembered with pride and 
sorrow the sacrifices their country made during the so-called Great Patriotic 
War, or World War II -- during which over 20 million Soviets perished.

And then, in December 1991, the Soviet Union suddenly collapsed. In its place 
arose new freedoms and opportunities, but also a lasting nostalgia for the 
"good old days." Cohen says that for the elderly who lived most of their 
lives during the Soviet era, it is still hard to come to grips with the fact 
that the country they grew up in has been consigned to history's dustbin. He 
also says nostalgia for the past is being fueled by the hardships of the 
present.

For most people, Cohen says, newfound freedoms have yet to add up to a better 
way of life. 

"But a second thing," he says, "is that a way of life has been lost. And what 
has yet to be gained -- if it is to be positive [in comparison to] the end of 
the Soviet Union -- remains for the great majority of people -- both in 
Russia and the former territories, except possibly the Baltics -- futuristic 
and theoretical, sort of like communism was under the Soviet system. It's a 
radiant future, but it's in stark contrast with a very grim present."

According to Cohen, the shining achievement of the Soviet Union was its 
comprehensive social-welfare system.

"For most Soviet citizens, what the system achieved -- particularly after 
Stalin -- was what we would call in the West a fairly modern welfare state, 
which I've called occasionally a cradle-to-grave welfare state. The state 
provided all sorts of entitlements and subsidies so that you were born, 
educated, had work, lived fairly comfortably, and died -- if you didn't 
challenge the political rules of the game -- with great certainty and 
predictability. That -- for, I would guess, 80 percent to 90 percent of the 
citizens of the former Soviet Union, except in the Baltics -- is gone, lost. 
That security of life, that sense of entitlement and welfare privileges and 
subsidies is gone."

A troubled transition period in the former Soviet republics has meant a rise 
in poverty, crime, disease, and mortality rates. A 1999 transition report by 
the United Nations Development Program warned "a human crisis of monumental 
proportions is emerging in the former Soviet Union."

A 2000 World Bank report on poverty in the former Soviet states -- which 
includes the countries of Eastern Europe -- said more than one-fifth of the 
region's population was living below the poverty line, with the highest 
poverty rates in Tajikistan (70 percent), Moldova (55 percent), and 
Kyrgyzstan (50 percent). The report also said the number of people living in 
poverty in the region has increased more than 10 times over the last decade. 
In its 2001 annual survey, the International Confederation of Free Trade 
Unions said "the wage gap between an increasingly pauperized majority and a 
tiny rich elite is widening" in the transition states of the former Soviet 
Union and former Eastern Bloc states.

One of the countries hardest hit is Moldova, where poverty levels are among 
the highest in Europe. Last year, the country's biggest export was its ".md" 
Internet domain suffix, which it sells to medical professionals, primarily in 
the U.S. Moldova has also become a hub for the illicit trade in human organs. 

Such desperate poverty is in marked contrast to the days of the Soviet era, 
when many aspects of life in the republics were subsidized by Moscow. In this 
respect, Cohen says, the Soviet Union should not be thought of as an empire 
in the traditional sense. Whereas a dominating power like Britain took more 
from its colonies -- like India -- than it gave back, the Soviet Union 
assured its republics a more or less even standard of living. 

"The problem [with looking at the Soviet Union as an empire] is that it begs 
the question of whether it truly was that kind of traditional empire -- 
whether we should look at the republics as colonies [and] at Russia as a 
metropolis that exploited them. And clearly the Soviet Union did not qualify 
in important respects. For one thing, economic flows show that many of the 
republics were the beneficiaries, economically, of Moscow. They received so 
many subsidies, energy, and things like that. So you can't see a clear 
pattern of colonial economic exploitation."

What if the Soviet Union hadn't collapsed in 1991, but instead Mikhail 
Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost had somehow managed to reform the 
country into a more democratic entity? It's a question Cohen likes to ponder. 
He contends such a scenario could have meant a smoother path to democracy for 
many of the former republics -- in particular, the Central Asian states.

"Would political reform [and] democratization have proceeded better, more 
steadily and further, in the non-Slavic republics -- say, in Central Asia -- 
had the Soviet Union continued to exist, because the leaders of Central Asia 
would have been compelled to follow the democratization policies of Moscow? 
That's a hypothetical [question]. But it's an important question to ask, 
because democratization really no longer exists in Central Asia -- not only 
in Central Asia, but it's become a new form of authoritarianism where the old 
communist elites have turned into clan families which monopolize the wealth 
and the politics of the country."

As proof of public support for the USSR, Cohen points to the fact that nine 
of the 15 republics voted to preserve the union -- albeit a repackaged, 
looser version -- in a March 1991 referendum. He contends that what made the 
collapse of the Soviet Union palatable to many citizens was the belief that 
it would quickly be replaced by a new, more flexible, version of itself. 

"Because remember that when [Boris] Yeltsin, [Ukraine's Leonid] Kravchuk and 
[Belarus's Stanislau] Shushkevich announced the end of the Soviet Union, they 
said there would continue to be a single economic and military space." 

None of that happened, despite the formation of the Commonwealth of 
Independent States on 8 December 1991. The CIS has largely failed as a 
surrogate for the Soviet Union, but Cohen says he remains optimistic. The 
USSR is a relic of the past, he says, but a strong CIS could someday prove a 
more perfect union. 

(This is the final part of a three-part series.)

*******

#7
New York Times
December 15, 2001
Novelist Chronicles the Intrigues of the New Moguls
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

PEREDELKINO, Russia, Dec. 14 -- In the quiet snow of this old writers' 
community, Yuliya Latynina is at home working on her next novel. The window 
of her small second- story room opens out onto a birch grove and the house of 
Boris Pasternak, now a museum.

The rustic Russian idyll is marred only by the red brick castles encircled by 
high walls and security cameras just down the road. These brash newcomers to 
the neighborhood are the homes of the "new Russians," nouveaux riches who 
made it big in the decade of Wild East "bizness" that followed the fall of 
Communism.

Ms. Latynina, 35, reflexively shy but extremely well-connected in those 
business circles, says her highbrow writer neighbors were furious with the 
new "bandits" in town. 

"But I know several of them," Ms. Latynina said, smiling. "They're not 
bandits at all. They're businessmen."

A journalist, she picked up her nuanced understanding of Russia's economic 
vernacular while traveling the country in the last six years, writing news 
articles about an economy in free fall.

Her candid accounts of the intrigues among business moguls have won her 
awards for best business journalism, and two television shows. But it is her 
five novels, her readers say, that reveal the most about the new Russia.

She prefers writing economic thrillers to news stories, saying that by 
wrapping fiction around facts and real people, she can tell the real story 
behind Russia's often misleading appearance.

That is why the business and political elite read her avidly, although many 
average Russians, far from the wealth and conspiracies she chronicles, do 
not. Her colleagues call her eccentric. Pundits call her astute. Her 
interview subjects call her extremely disloyal.

"She has a rare ability to see in real life what average people don't see," 
said Andrei Illarionov, economic advisor to President Vladimir V. Putin. "In 
time Russian business will act in absolutely civilized ways, and this slice 
of life will be lost. For certain epochs people read Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. 
For this epoch people will read Latynina."

A former student of medieval Europe, the diminutive Ms. Latynina draws on her 
knowledge of history to explain modern-day Russia: a lawless land with a 
dilapidated central government controlled by feudal lords and their bandit 
armies.

Her Russia is lurid and brutal, a place where the local police receive their 
wages from business moguls, sex with the boss is obligatory for secretaries, 
and nuclear scientists subsist as hunters after months without salaries.

Everything — absolutely everything — is for sale.

In "Stag Hunting," her novel about the takeover of a Siberian metal plant in 
the mid-1990's, a devoutly Communist factory director is heard early on in a 
poignant lament about "bizness" in Russia. 

"I don't know how it happens," says the character, Danil Fyodorovich 
Senchyakov, who is trying to save a defunct helicopter plant. "I don't steal, 
and my factory is paralyzed. You steal, and your factory is working. I want 
my factory to work."

That complaint, voiced to a rich young capitalist, captures the 
contradictions of post-Communist Russia. By Page 46, Mr. Senchyakov is on the 
payroll of his nemesis, the capitalist.

Like a textbook for newcomers to Russian business, "Stag Hunting" has 
footnotes with real-life examples and a useful appendix detailing how the 
fictitious factory launders its money to avoid tax inspectors and, when 
necessary, bribe politicians.

Some have even used it as an instruction manual.

Ms. Latynina, who cut her teeth as a novelist on four science fiction books, 
is a living contrast to the carousing, Mercedes-driving characters of her 
economic fiction. 

Unlike many of her sources, she has not amassed a fortune, although her 
existence is comfortably middle class. She does not drink or smoke. She shuns 
fashionable gatherings and, in a world of huge egos, does not like to talk 
about herself.

Her mother is a well-known literary critic and her father a poet, and she 
lives with them in a rambling wooden house in this village just outside 
Moscow, where in Soviet times the government housed favored writers to sit 
and ruminate amid the birch trees and the snow.

In her news stories she holds Russia's business moguls, known as the 
oligarchs, accountable for stealing from the state and wreaking economic 
havoc.

Her books, several of which feature an amused intellectual woman watching the 
antics of men, tell a different story. She contradicts the common outsiders' 
view that government has led economic change here and argues that those venal 
businessmen have in fact driven it.

Her government officials are uniformly self-interested and a large drag on 
Russia's economy.

"Oligarchs are a much better force for liberal reforms than bureaucrats," she 
said.

Times are indeed changing. Business is adopting clearer rules, contract 
killings are harder to cover up, reputations are being established and 
valuable government-owned companies now are sold for market prices. Ms. 
Latynina says she will chronicle all this in her next novel, and credits 
straightforward logic for the shift.

"People who in the first stage devoured as much as they could now are taking 
care that no one devours what they have," she said. "Now we've reached a 
stage when they are saying, `We want honest rules of the game.' People are 
weighing the consequences of their actions. Those who did not are in graves 
with Mercedes symbols on their tombstones."

*******

#8
Jamestown Foundation Monitor
December 14, 2001

PUTIN RULES OUT EXTENDING PRESIDENTIAL TERM.
President Vladimir Putin this week apparently put to rest the
rumors that he was considering amending the Russian
constitution to lengthen the presidential term. Speaking at a
December 12 Kremlin reception marking Constitution Day, Putin
declared that the term would not be extended for him, adding
that there were no plans for amendments leading to a
"principally new constitution" and that nothing would be
undertaken that would "dismantle" the constitution's "basic
values" or abandon the country's "democratic achievements"
(NTV.ru, December 12).

The sturm und drang over the presidential term started
earlier this month, when Novye Izvestia, one of the
newspapers owned by anti-Kremlin oligarch Boris Berezovsky,
reported that Putin's team was considering beginning the
process of amending Russia's constitution in order to extend
the presidential term from four to seven years. Putin's time
in office prior to the passage of such an amendment, the
newspaper wrote, would not count as part of his
constitutionally permitted two terms, meaning that he could
end up serving two seven-year terms plus three years--a total
of seventeen years. That report was given credibility when
Sergei Mironov, the newly elected speaker of the Federation
Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, and a
long-time Putin associate from St. Petersburg, said the
presidential term should be extended five years at a minimum
and that the Federation Council could initiate the
constitutional changes necessary to extend it (see the
Monitor, December 7, 10).

Earlier this week, the idea received yet another boost from
three governors of regions in Russia's northwest. Novgorod
Oblast Governor Mikhail Prusak, who is close to Putin, said
he was in favor of lengthening the presidential term to seven
years because "four years is too little for a country like
ours." Prusak added, however, that the president should be
given no more than the two terms in office currently allowed
under the constitution. Likewise, Vladimir Butov, head of the
Nenetsky Autonomous District, said that the presidential term
should be increased to five or even seven years. Citing his
own experience as an executive, Butov noted: "For the first
four years you only start to deal with many issues, and do
something in the next four." If the presidential term were
extended to seven years, then two terms--a total of 14 years
in office--would be sufficient "to impose order both in the
state and in politics," Butov argued. Pskov Oblast Governor
Yevgeny Mikhailov went further, arguing that not only should
the presidential term be extended to at least five years, but
that there should be no limits on the number of terms in
office. Mikhailov argued that such changes were necessary for
the sake of "stability," given that "all artificial
limitations clearly lead to the destabilization of society"
(Polit.ru, December 11).

Last year, it should be noted, Prusak joined two other
governors, Belgorod's Yevgeny Savchenko and Kurgan's Oleg
Bogomolov, in recommending that the presidential term be
extended to seven years, that Russia's governors be appointed
by the president and that the president be appointed by the
parliament, prime minister and the "power ministries" rather
than be chosen in a direct popular vote (see the Monitor,
February 29, 2000).

This week, before Putin rejected the idea of extending the
presidential term, a leading political commentator, Sergei
Chugaev, theorized that Mironov's demarche may have been a
trial balloon by members of Putin's team aimed at testing the
loyalty of various politicians and officials, or perhaps a
"smokescreen" for carrying less important but nonetheless
significant reforms, such as changing the procedure for
forming the Federation Council yet again. It would make more
sense for Putin to push for such a constitutional change
closer to the end of his second term, and only if that term
had been a successful one, Chugaev wrote (Komsomolskaya
Pravda, December 11). None of the Russian commentaries
recalled that Putin himself last year, shortly before his
election as president, declared that he favored extending the
presidential term from four to eight years, and that this
might be done prior to the 2004 presidential election. Putin
said at that time that the idea should be "put before the
country's population," implying that there might be a
referendum on the idea (see the Monitor, December 7; February
29, 2000). In any case, following Putin's December 12
statement on the issue, the main proponent of extending the
presidential term, Sergei Mironov, quickly backed away from
it, saying that Putin had pronounced the last word and that
the issue was now "closed" (Polit.ru, December 13).

Regardless of who initiated the latest talk about extending
the presidential term--and whatever Putin's real feelings on
the matter are--Mironov's demarche has worked to the Russian
president's advantage, PR-wise. As one publication put it,
the issue provided Putin with the opportunity to "demonstrate
his role as guarantor of the Constitution (in the most
fitting setting possible--at a ceremony marking Constitution
Day in the Kremlin Palace) and, in general, as guarantor of
democratic rights and freedoms" (SMI.ru, December 13).

*******

#9
Russian Communist leader attacks Russia's policy on nuclear forces, NATO 
Interfax

Moscow, 14 December: The leader of the Russian Communist Party and the 
Popular Patriotic Union of Russia, Gennadiy Zyuganov, has asked President 
Vladimir Putin to hold urgent consultations with both parliamentary chambers 
regarding the USA's abandonment of the 1972 ABM Treaty.

"An assessment of US actions is not a personal matter of Mr Putin," Zyuganov 
said in a statement on Friday [14 December]. Russia should give "an 
appropriate response to the USA, similar to the one that our predecessors 
gave to Nazi Germany," he said.

Russia "still has time to drastically review its state strategy," the 
statement reads. The strategic nuclear forces and conventional armed forces 
should receive priority financing, he said. Decisions on closing down the 
radar facilities in Cuba and the Russian naval base in Vietnam should be 
reviewed. Cooperation should be intensified with the countries that are also 
affected by the US decision. Russia must "stop its shameful flirtation with 
NATO," he said.

The US actions allow Russia to ignore commitments that "[former Russian 
president Boris] Yeltsin made to undermine the structure of strategic nuclear 
forces and abandon use of multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles," 
he said.

"Russia's Popular Patriotic Union and the Russian Communist Party protest 
against Mr Putin's intention to drastically reduce Russia's nuclear forces. 
These steps directly contribute to the higher efficiency of the US missile 
defence and will completely destroy Russia's defence capabilities," the 
statement reads. "'Hawks' have come to dominate the US leadership, and under 
the pretext of fighting terrorism, they intend to bring the entire world to 
its knees and achieve military supremacy over Russia," according to the 
statement.

The US president's step will escalate the arms race and divert gigantic 
resources from important social problems, he said.

*******

#10
Rumsfeld says to reward Caucasus for Afghan help
By Charles Aldinger
  
YEREVAN, Dec 15 (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made a 
lightning tour of the Caucasus on Saturday with the offer of military 
assistance to states close to Afghanistan in return for their help in the 
U.S. war on terrorism. 

Rumsfeld landed in the Armenian capital Yerevan on the second leg of a 
one-day tour of the south Caucasus states of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia 
-- across the Caspian Sea from the Central Asian states bordering 
Afghanistan. 

The three former Soviet republics have offered Washington use of their 
airspace for the Afghan campaign. 

Rumsfeld earlier told reporters flying with him that U.S. and Afghan troops, 
backed by some of the campaign's heaviest bombing, had made a major advance 
against al Qaeda guerrillas in their besieged mountain hideout. 

On the ground, Afghan commanders said Chechen fighters loyal to al Qaeda 
leader Osama bin Laden were fighting to the death, but 50 other al Qaeda 
guerrillas had surrendered. 

Washington accuses bin Laden of masterminding the September 11 hijack attacks 
on New York and Washington, which killed nearly 3,300 people. 

REWARDS FOR SUPPORT 

Rumsfeld and senior U.S. officials said Washington was anxious to reward the 
impoverished states for their support. 

"I think we are able -- or at least we will be able -- to have 
military-to-military relations on a sort of fresh basis as we go forward," 
Rumsfeld told reporters on his aircraft. 

He said the U.S. Congress was about to approve legislation to lift 1992 
sanctions prohibiting military relations with Armenia and Azerbaijan despite 
their continuing dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. 

Officials said closer contact with the United States would allow the 
countries to modernise their armies and press ahead with post-communist 
economic reforms. 

In Azerbaijan, Rumsfeld held talks with President Haydar Aliyev and thanked 
him for his support for U.S. military action. 

"The Congress is currently considering a waiver for Section 907, which would 
allow the United States and your country to engage in greater 
military-to-military cooperation," he told Aliyev across a long table. 

"We are hopeful that the change in law will take place this week and this 
will be the beginning of improved cooperation between our two countries." 

Aliyev, leader of a mainly Muslim state of eight million, said the waiver 
would be a "very good Christmas present." 

Azerbaijan suffered a humiliating defeat in a 1988-94 war with Armenia over 
Nagorno-Karabakh, after the enclave's mainly ethnic Armenian population tried 
to break from Azeri rule. A ceasefire ended the conflict but the dispute is 
unresolved. 

On arriving in Armenia, Rumsfeld went straight into meetings with President 
Robert Kocharyan and other top officials. 

ADVANCE ON AL QAEDA 

Briefing reporters en route, Rumsfeld said U.S. and Afghan forces had made 
significant advances on al Qaeda fighters in caves and tunnels in eastern 
Afghanistan's Tora Bora region. 

"The forces on the ground near Tora Bora have advanced about two km (just 
over a mile)...in the last eight hours, which is a heck of a lot in that kind 
of terrain area," he said. 

"They made good progress. It is a very heavy force, and it is obviously 
working," he added. 

Rumsfeld said U.S. warplanes had dropped about 240 bombs on Thursday and 180 
in a brief span on Friday in the Tora Bora region, where U.S. officials 
believe bin Laden could be hiding. 

U.S. Special Forces troops were taking part in the dangerous business of 
clearing caves and tunnels, he added. 

For the first time, Rumsfeld said U.S. forces in Afghanistan were holding 
several detainees from al Qaeda or their former Taliban protectors, but would 
not be more precise except to say they were not enemy leaders. 

Rumsfeld was due to fly to Georgia later on Saturday to hold talks with 
Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze. 

He said he also planned to visit Uzbekistan before moving on to Brussels 
early next week for a two-day meeting of NATO defence ministers. 

*******

#11
Scrapped Treaty May Benefit Russia
December 14, 2001
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
  
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia may actually benefit from America's decision to scrap
the 1972 Anti-Ballistic missile treaty despite years of protests about
abandoning the pact, defense analysts say. 

The analysts argue that the U.S. move frees Russia from constraints under
other nuclear arms control agreements and could bolster its defense
capability rather than erode it. 

President Vladimir Putin's low-key response Thursday to President Bush's
announcement to leave the pact in six months reflects the sentiment that
Russia may ultimately benefit. Putin said the U.S. move was a ``mistake,''
but not a threat to Russia. 

``It would have been in U.S. interests to preserve the ABM,'' said Ivan
Safranchuk, director of the Moscow office of the Center for Defense
Information, a Washington-based think tank. ``By renouncing it, the United
States gives Russia an opportunity to take back some of its earlier
concessions.'' 

Putin said earlier this year that U.S. withdrawal from the pact would
shatter other arms control agreements and warned that Russia may respond by
fitting multiple nuclear warheads onto its single-warhead missiles. 

Although Putin did not repeat these statements Thursday, some observers say
Russia could later announce itself free from earlier obligations. 

``Russia may now withdraw from the START II treaty, freeing itself from the
ban on the deployment of missiles with multiple warheads,'' said Ret. Lt.
Gen. Vasily Lata, the former deputy chief of Russia's Strategic Missile
Forces. ``It would serve Russia's security interests well.'' 

When the Russian parliament ratified the START II arms control treaty in
April 2000, it made it conditional on the preservation of the ABM treaty,
which prohibits building a national missile defense. 

START II, signed in 1993, required both countries to halve the number of
their strategic nuclear weapons from the 6,000 warheads each allowed under
START I. 

Abandoning START II would allow Russia to fit three nuclear warheads to
each of its new, single-warhead Topol-M missiles, said Sergei Rogov, head
of the Moscow-based U.S.A. and Canada Institute. 

``Fitting multiple warheads to missiles would be quite efficient in both an
economic and a military sense,'' Rogov said. 

Land-based nuclear missiles make up the core of the Russian strategic
forces. With START II in effect, Moscow would have had to deploy a large
number of new Topol-M missiles or build nuclear submarines equipped with
ballistic missiles to match U.S. arsenals. The cash-strapped government
can't afford either option. 

Russia has pushed for radical bilateral cuts in nuclear weapons to avoid a
losing competition to match U.S. arsenals. 

In the new, warmer relationship with Moscow, Bush pledged last month to cut
U.S. arsenals by two-thirds to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads. 

On Thursday, Putin matched Bush's pledge with his own proposal to cut
warheads to between 1,500 and 2,200, but again pushed for the cuts to be
written down in a formal treaty - something Bush has opposed. 

Most analysts predict that while Russia won't make any sudden moves that
might hurt the new friendship with the United States, it will defend its
security interests. 

``Without officially renouncing the arms control treaties, Russia may say
that it no longer considers itself bound by some of their provisions,''
Rogov said. 

******