[lbo-talk] Tajikistan: Russia scores over U.S.

[Chris Doss]

I think a lot of this talk about Russia and the US "vying for influence" in Central Asia and the Caucasus is overblown. As far as I know, Moscow and Washington have been cooperating pretty closely in the area. If you can believe Foreign Secretary Ivanov, Putin himself had to persuade the 'stans to let US troops on their soil, and Saakashvili in Georgia has been much more cooperative with Russia than Shevardnadze was. I think the Kremlin views the US as a stabilizing force in Central Asia. Anyway, the only way the US could push Russia out of the region would be if it figured out a way to run a power cable from Washington.

 
----

 
The Hindu

Sunday, Jun 06, 2004

Tajikistan: Russia scores over U.S.

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, JUNE 5. Moscow scored a major win over Washington in their 
battle
for domination of ex-Soviet Central Asia by persuading Tajikistan to 
drop
its demand for an early pullout of Russian border guards and to grant
permanent status to a Russian military base in the ex-Soviet Central 
Asian
republic.

uvj at vsnl.com wrote:The Hindu

Sunday, Jun 06, 2004

Tajikistan: Russia scores over U.S.

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, JUNE 5. Moscow scored a major win over Washington in their battle
for domination of ex-Soviet Central Asia by persuading Tajikistan to drop
its demand for an early pullout of Russian border guards and to grant
permanent status to a Russian military base in the ex-Soviet Central Asian
republic.

Meeting the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, at the Russian Black Sea
resort of Sochi on Friday the Tajik President, Imomali Rakhmonov, asked him
to extend the Russian border guards' stay until the end of 2006, a Kremlin
spokesman said. Earlier Tajikistan insisted the guards should leave by
mid-2005. Russia's 9,000 border guards patrol 90 per cent of Tajikistan's
border with opium-producing Afghanistan.

Tajikistan also agreed to hand over to Russia "for free and permanent use"
the land for the establishment of a Russian military base in Tajikistan, Mr.
Putin's foreign policy advisor, Sergei Prikhodko, told reporters after the
meeting. Dushanbe has been dragging its feet over granting a permanent legal
status to the 11,000-strong Russian army division deployed in Tajikistan in
the hope of winning economic and defence aid from the United States and
other NATO countries. The U.S. has deployed about 3,000 troops at Tajik air
bases in addition to bigger military presence in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan
and has poured millions of dollars in Tajik infrastructure and military
projects.

The U.S. think-tank, Strategic Forecasting Inc., last month hailed the
coming withdrawal of the Russian military from Tajikistan as a "strategic
victory" for Washington.

However, Moscow has expressed fears that the pullout of its troops and
border guards would open the Tajik border to drug trafficking from
Afghanistan. Washington's European allies appear to share Russian concerns,
since 70 per cent of opium and 100 per cent of heroin reaching Europe come
from Afghanistan via Tajikistan and Russia. In the past few weeks the chiefs
of staff of the British and French armies descended on Tajikistan. The head
of the United Nations drug-control agency, Mario Costa, who also visited
Dushanbe recently, said he was "worried by the news (of Russian
withdrawal)."

Copyright © 2004, The Hindu.

___________________________________
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

		
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <../attachments/20040607/cf685c1b/attachment.htm>