[lbo-talk] U.S. eyes Russian turf

[uvj at vsnl.com]

The Hindu

Wednesday, Dec 31, 2003

U.S. eyes Russian turf

By Vladimir Radyuhin

Russia has sent a strong signal to the U.S. that it will fight attempts to
erode its position in the former Soviet states.

RUSSIA AND the United States are heading for a new spiral of rivalry as
Washington moves to install pro-Western leaders in the former Soviet
Republics and set up more military bases along Russian borders.

On Sunday, Georgia looks set to become the first former Soviet Republic
where the U.S. has orchestrated the rise to power of a new leader. Mikhail
Saakashvili, a U.S.-trained lawyer, is expected to win a snap presidential
poll on January 4. It was called after Georgia's veteran leader, Eduard
Shevardnadze, was forced to resign in the face of massive protests over
suspected rigging in a parliamentary poll.

Russia's Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, denounced "external interference" in
the crisis, while Mr. Shevardnadze directly accused the U.S. of engineering
his ouster through its envoy in Georgia, Richard Miles, and the Soros
Foundation. A faithful U.S. ally, Mr. Shevardnadze, was shocked by
Washington's betrayal. "I was one of the staunchest supporters of the U.S.
policy," he complained in an interview. "When they needed help on Iraq, I
gave it. I don't have an explanation to what has happened here."

What happened in Georgia was that the U.S. dumped Mr. Shevardnadze because
he failed to deliver and was suspected of squandering a good part of the
$2.3 billion in American aid in the past 10 years. Mr. Saakashvili, former
Justice Minister, who gained popularity exposing government corruption, is
known for his anti-Russian and pro-American views. Two weeks after Mr.
Shevardnadze was ousted, the U.S. Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld,
visited Georgia and Azerbaijan to discuss long-term access for U.S. forces.

Both countries have strategic importance for the U.S. as the sole transit
route for Caspian oil and gas supplies to the West bypassing Russia. A
U.S.-lobbied Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline should start pumping oil in 2005.
Plans are also on to build a gas pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey. The
U.S. hopes to persuade Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, where most of the
Caspian energy reserves are located, to export oil and gas to Europe through
these pipelines, rather than via Russia. Military presence in the region is
essential for the U.S. to control the Caspian Sea and threaten Iran.
Pentagon officials said plans were also being drawn up to establish a
permanent military presence in the former Soviet Central Asia - in
Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, where the U.S. already has temporary
bases set up for the post-9/11 anti-terror campaign in Afghanistan.

Moscow reacted angrily to the proposed redeployment of the U.S. forces from
Germany to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics. "Any plans to
bring NATO's infrastructure closer to our borders evoke our understandable
and legitimate concern," the Russian Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov, said.
He made it clear that Moscow saw American bases as a threat to its security.
"We believe that security for one country must not be ensured at the expense
of other countries."

Russia was also enraged by the U.S. demand that it withdraw its forces early
from Georgia and Moldova. At an annual summit of the Organisation of
Security and Cooperation in Europe earlier this month, Russia countered the
demand with its own call to NATO's new and would-be members to ratify
Europe's conventional forces pact which sets limits to troop deployment on
the continent.

The U.S. moves to enlarge its foothold in the Caucasus and Central Asia mean
that Washington is refusing to recognise the former Soviet Republics as a
zone of Russia's strategic interests. Georgia may not be the only newly
independent state where the U.S. is conspiring to replace the Soviet-era
leaders with pro-Western politicians.

According to the former head of Russia's Federal Security Service, Nikolai
Kovalyov, Georgia's young opposition leaders, including Mr. Saakashvili, had
been trained in U.S.-funded camps in Serbia along with representatives from
Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and a few other former Soviet
Republics. They studied the Yugoslav experience of removing the President,
Slobodan Milosevic, with the help of massive public protests organised by
Serbia's student movement Otpor.

"We are working with civil movements in several countries, and I don't want
to name them. But Georgia is the first success story," Otpor's leader,
Slobodan Djinovic, who visited Tbilisi earlier this year to share his
revolutionary experience, was quoted by the BBC as commenting on the removal
of Mr. Shevardnadze, who himself confirmed that he had been ousted
"according to the Yugoslav scenario."

Otpor-modelled student demonstrations in Moldova last month helped thwart a
Moscow-brokered settlement in a decade-long conflict between the central
government and the Russian-speaking Transdniestr region. Moldova's
President, Vladimir Voronin, reversed his endorsement of the peace plan
after students protesters, encouraged by American and European critics of
the plan, vowed to bring the Government down. The U.S. objects to the
continued presence of Russian peacekeepers in Transdniestr and wants them
replaced by the European forces.

In the wake of the anti-Shevardnadze "velvet revolution", Mr. Saakashvili
visited Ukraine to sign a cooperation pact with the Opposition movement "Our
Ukraine". He thanked "Ukrainian colleagues" for solidarity and predicted
that Ukraine would soon follow in Georgia's footsteps to install the
pro-Western Opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, as President "in four to
six months," that is, before the presidential elections scheduled for next
October. Attempts by Ukrainian Opposition parliamentarians to sabotage the
vote on a constitutional reform last week by jamming coins into the
electronic voting system, clambering over desks, and staging fistfights were
eerily reminiscent of the storming of the Georgian Parliament by
Saakashvili-led protesters a few weeks earlier.

"It is to be regretted that the methods of pressure and interference in
internal affairs that were used in Georgia are also being used in other
countries," Mr. Igor Ivanov said.

The ex-Soviet leaders of Central Asian republics are also on the U.S. hit
list. Kazakhstan's President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is the target of a
"Kazakhgate" trial in New York against an American businessman accused of
giving bribes to Kazakh officials on behalf of several U.S. companies. The
U.S. Congress has stepped up pressure on Mr. Nazarbayev to release from
prison Opposition leaders in a bid to encourage the change of elite in
Kazakhstan in a parliamentary election scheduled for next year.

Detailed instructions on "How to Make a Velvet Revolution in Tajikistan"
have recently been circulated in the capital Dushanbe against the backdrop
of stepped up activity of the Soros Foundation and demonstrative contacts of
U.S. diplomats with Opposition leaders in the poorest republic of Central
Asia where parliamentary elections are due in a little more than a year.

The U.S.-masterminded coup in Georgia was met with concern in the capitals
of the Commonwealth of Independent States whose leaders, like Mr.
Shevardnadze, belong to the Soviet-era cadres. Expressing their shared
concern, the Ukraine President, Leonid Kuchma, issued a stern statement in
his capacity as current chairman of the CIS Council of Heads of State
denouncing the methods of the Georgian Opposition as "categorically
unacceptable to all democratic states."

Russia has sent a strong signal to the U.S. that it will fight attempts to
erode its positions in the former Soviet states. A new defence policy paper
published in October said Russia would view any "deployment of foreign
troops ... in adjacent and friendly states" as a threat to its security.

At the same time, Russia under its pragmatic President, Vladimir Putin, has
been increasingly relying on its growing economic strength to consolidate
its position in the former Soviet states. Taking advantage of the heavy
dependence of its neighbours on Russian energy supplies or Russian transit
pipelines to export their oil and gas to Europe, Mr. Putin has encouraged
Russian companies to acquire industrial assets in the CIS states. Russia
already controls most of the oil and gas processing factories in Ukraine,
power generation and distribution networks in Armenia and Georgia, core
sector industries in Kazakhstan and Belarus, etc.

Last week, Mr. Putin met Mr. Kuchma to win his final "yes" for a free trade
zone among the four most powerful former Soviet Republics - Russia, Ukraine,
Kazakhstan and Belarus - a plan vehemently opposed by the U.S. and the
European Union. In a major concession to its partners, Russia has agreed to
lift an 18 per cent value-added tax on its oil and gas exports. If the free
trade pact takes off, more CIS states may join it.

Russia is also continuing efforts to work out constructive interaction with
the U.S. in the post-Soviet space based on the common concern for stability
in the region. The Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation of CIS
states is reported to have prepared, for its next summit in April, proposals
for military cooperation between the Russian and the U.S. air bases in
Kyrgyzstan, which could become a pilot project for wider cooperation, rather
than rivalry, in the former Soviet states.

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu.