BRIDGET KENDALL: Another question about nuclear weapons, this time about Iran. We have a question from Iran: what will Russia's position be on Iran's nuclear program if Iran won't accept the package of incentives that the international community is offering? Will Russia in that case support sanctions?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: We believe that any country, including Iran, has a right of access to high technology in order to develop its economy. That of course concerns Iran in full measure. The development of nuclear technology of course should proceed under the control of international bodies and is the first thing. And the second is that it should proceed without creating any threats regarding the development of any weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. So we'll be insisting on compromise decisions that would allow us to resolve this two-pronged problem. Russia has formulated a number of suggestions that would allow Iran and some other countries access to modern nuclear technology. What do we propose to do? We would suggest creating a network of international centres dealing with the enrichment and utilisation of nuclear fuel. We hope that our Iranian partners will listen to the proposals our six countries have made. My latest meeting with President Ahmadinejad of Iran showed that Tehran has taken a positive attitude to these proposals. But we'd like their reaction to be quicker. We would like the dialogue based on these proposals to be more constructive. We very much expect this.
BRIDGET KENDALL: You might hope that Iran will agree to a compromise but you could wait and wait for a long time. Isn't there a point at which the UN has to take a strong stand and agree to sanctions?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: I agree with you that we cannot wait endlessly - it's counterproductive. But it's even more counterproductive to get the problem into an impasse from where we won't know how to get out. For this reason I wouldn’t want to get ahead of myself and talk about sanctions. At this point I would concentrate my attention on carrying out the proposals that have been formulated by the six countries. In my view they're constructive proposals and Russia has taken an active part in formulating them. And I understand that the Iranian leadership is ready to engage in a dialogue on the basis of these proposals in August. But in our opinion this could happen even sooner. As someone who is hosting the G8 summit in St Petersburg this month, I would have liked to see the dialogue begin before the leaders of G8 countries arrive.
But of course in these circumstances we have to take into account the position of the Iranian authorities. I will repeat again that today I do not think we should get ahead of ourselves and force the situation, we should allow professionals to handle the situation. And finally, I would prefer this problem not to be taken back to the Security Council or to talk about sanctions. I would like this issue to be taken back to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], to professionals. I think this is possible, provided of course that the Iranian authorities react positively to our proposals.
BRIDGET KENDALL: If I understand rightly then, the cut off point for an Iranian response is August, but even then you want discussion to continue in Vienna. At this point we are not talking about sanctions.
VLADIMIR PUTIN: This is not our position, this is the position of all six countries including the European Three and the United States. And Russia participated in developing this position and will continue to adhere to the common agreement.
(snip)
BRIDGET KENDALL: The next theme is the top subject at the G8 summit in St Petersburg - energy security. Many people in Europe seem very worried about security of supplies from Russia especially after Russian gas was cut off to Ukraine in January of this year. And actually many questions have come in to our site right now on this very topic. Tom McLachlan in London asked: would there ever be a situation where Russia would use its political power to shut off the gas supplies to Western Europe?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: Can I ask you a question? How much is your necklace? Approximately.
BRIDGET KENDALL: That's a very unexpected question.
VLADIMIR PUTIN: Well you've asked me an unexpected question.
BRIDGET KENDALL: It would be very interesting if a thief overheard our conversation.
VLADIMIR PUTIN: I can assure you that thieves can already tell such things. So you can tell me approximately how much.
BRIDGET KENDALL: I am happy to say that it cost several hundred pounds.
VLADIMIR PUTIN: Excellent, very good. Would you sell it to me for five kopecks or for one ruble? I don't think you would agree - right?
BRIDGET KENDALL: Well as you're the President of Russia, perhaps I would make an exception.
VLADIMIR PUTIN: Maybe to the President of Russia in order to stress the closeness of relations between Russia and Britain. But you wouldn’t give it to the man on the street for nothing. My point is, why should Russia give away its property and natural resources for peanuts to its international partners?
For fifteen years Russia has been supplying its neighbours with gas at prices that were well below market prices. For fifteen years we've been in fact helping our neighbours to the tune of three to five billion dollars per year.
We've been talking to our partners, including in Ukraine, each year about the fact that we must change to market principles. At the beginning of last year we reached this agreement with President Yushchenko. In practice, the discussion was held at his initiative. Unfortunately, as it came to real things we were not able to reach an adequate solution and we were forced to suspend deliveries - not to western Europe mind you - but to Ukraine. And our Ukrainian partners perfectly understood what consequences this could have. And we did not limit the quantity of our supplies that were meant for European consumers, but our Ukrainian partners started to illegally tap into the supplies that were meant for western Europe.
Russia has been supplying gas to Europe for more than 40 years. Despite all our internal political and economic hardships at the beginning and throughout the 1990s, there was never once any disruption to the deliveries to western Europe. Europeans have nothing to fear.
Moreover, our complicated and sometimes dramatic talks with Ukraine have led to what I consider to be a very positive result for our western European consumers. Why? Because, first of all, we have ceased determining the price through negotiations. We now adhere to market principles; the Kremlin, the government – none of them determine prices. We agreed with our Ukrainian partners that we will agree on the price with Ukraine just as we do with any country in western Europe - be it Britain, Germany or another country.
What is the calculation? It’s a very simply one. Today's gas price is determined by the average market price of last year and takes into account the average price of gasoline and the average price of oil. That is a perfect market mechanism to regulate this price. Moscow does not influence this price. This is the first positive result from our negotiations with Ukraine.
And another thing that is very important for western European consumers. In previous years the price of the gas we supplied to western Europe was conditional on the price of the gas we sold to Ukraine, because transporting gas to Europe always allowed our Ukrainian partners to ask for discount on the price they were paying for our gas.
Now, we must give full credit to Ukrainian leadership and President Yushchenko, they have taken a very correct and courageous step. We agreed to separate the issues and that there will be two contracts. One is for the purchase of gas for Ukraine and in this respect we will determine the price as I said before. And the second contract that is completely separate from our agreements with Ukraine concerns transporting gas to western Europe. And this is an additional guarantee that we will be able to provide western European consumers with gas.
(snip)
And another question on Chechnya, this time from Youhan Mistry who asks: was the Chechen war worth it? Thousands of Chechen civilians were killed as were Russians, including in the theatre siege and in Beslan. So was it worth it?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: First of all, with respect to criticism about the Chechen referendum. I want to draw your attention to the fact that we invited international observers in order for them to be able to control the way the referendum and the voting took place. Strange, or maybe not, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Organisation of Arab States were the ones who displayed interest. These were the organisations that came to Chechnya. And it's those two organisations that I think would be interested in the Muslim population of the Chechen Republic being able to voluntarily and fully express their opinion on the constitution. And in their reports there were some unfavourable remarks but on the whole they were satisfied with how the referendum proceeded and how the constitution was adopted.
I know that in the western media this process – the voting and adopting the constitution – was criticized. I don't think that was justified. Moreover, I believe that providing political, moral and communications support to people who have taken up an armed struggle to attain political aims is unjustified in today’s world. I already talked about Great Britain but we also know about the Basque country in Spain. And also in France. In France, as we know, there is another territory that occasionally shows separatist tendencies. In Spain, in addition to the Basque country there are also other regions, such as Catalonia. There are other such European countries and this is also true in former Yugoslavia. I suppose you do know about nationalist and separatist tendencies amongst, for example, the Hungarian population in some areas of central Europe. Why should we aggravate this situation in Europe? It is very dangerous and absolutely inadmissible to do so.
And now the question: was it worth it for us to fight the war in Chechnya? Of course it was. Because the war was not only linked to the independence of the Chechen Republic. We realized that we would not be left in peace by these forces who have nothing in common with Chechen people. They would be using the territory as a foothold to construct inroads into the Russian Federation and for attacking other neighbouring Russian regions. There were masses of people who had to flee from certain areas of Russia because it was not possible to live beside the Chechen Republic. Because of bandits, because of kidnappings and other such things that occurred en masse. In five to seven years over two and a half thousand people were openly sold or bought on the Chechen market as slaves. Do you know about that? I am sure you do. And that is not all. We are simply convinced that if we had not acted, and brought the situation to the one that currently prevails, of course Chechnya wouldn’t have just been used as a jumping off point for attacks on Russia, it would have gone further. What was at stake? They were talking about creating a new state from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. A state with a very radical government.
We don't need that in Russia where we have certain compact regions with a Muslim population that they would have tried to incite. And Europe doesn't need that either, because other than destabilizing the situation it would have amounted to nothing.
BRDIGET KENDALL: You say that you would never tolerate the disintegration of Russia. But anyone from Georgia who's listening to our discussion now might very well say that this holds true for us in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. We wouldn't to see them leave Georgia.
VLADIMIR PUTIN: Fine. Let them hold a referendum among the local population, just as we did in Chechnya.
(snip)
And there’s another question, from Greg Davis, also from London: “What was it like working in the KGB during the Cold War, and is there anything you learned then that you use now in your work as President?”
VLADIMIR PUTIN: I think that all citizens of Russia have the right to feel proud of their country. Russia is an integral part of the world’s leading nations because Russian culture, and I will start with this, is an integral part of world culture. The Russian people have made an immense and invaluable contribution to world culture. I am sure that everyone taking part in today’s discussion knows the names of Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy, Lobachevsky, knows that our country launched the first satellite and that the first man in space, Yury Gagarin, was a citizen of our country. We have a lot to be proud of. We made a decisive contribution to the victory over Nazism in World War II. We suffered huge losses, but it was on the eastern front that the backbone of the Nazi war machine was broken.
But I think that our country’s future will be assured only if we see ourselves as full and equal partners in the world community, and not least, as part of the European family. This is the direction in which we are working. I can feel if not proud then at least satisfied with my work as President of the Russian Federation over recent years. We have changed significantly the economic and social situation in the country.
In the mid-1990s, people went for months and even years without getting paid. Pensions and military wages were not paid. This is all a thing of the past now. Yes, material levels are still low and people are unhappy about this, but we do now have a completely different economy. We lived for years with our hand outstretched, and we are grateful to our partners for giving us support and assistance during Russia’s very difficult years of social and economic transformation. But today the Russian economy is able not only to repay these debts but to do so ahead of schedule. We are pleased that we have reached an agreement on this with the Paris Club. Now that our own economy is growing we are able to help the developing countries, and we will do so.
At the same time, to give a frank and honest answer to the other part of the question regarding what makes me ashamed, Russia is a very wealthy country, but we still have a lot of poor people, and this is a great source of shame. We will do everything we can to raise living standards and improve the quality of life for our people from year to year. I think that we will succeed in achieving this goal not in some distant future but over the coming decades.
Lyubo, bratsy, lyubo, lyubo, bratsy, zhit!
ËÞÁÎ, ÁÐÀÒÖÛ, ËÞÁÎ, ËÞÁÎ, ÁÐÀÒÖÛ, ÆÈÒÜ!
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