Russian Leaders at Odds with the West
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin spoke yesterday about the possibility and even desirability of reexamining the principles for cooperation with the West. Medvedev declared his readiness to break ties with NATO, and Putin demanded “clarification” of relations with the World Trade Organization.
During a meeting yesterday with Russian representative in NATO Dmitry Rogozin at the Sochi presidential residence, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced that relations with NATO could be cut off. “We have been developing partnership relations with NATO for quite a while, but we do not need the illusion of partnership,” Medvedev stated. “We are ready for any decision, even halting relations as a whole.” Medvedev blamed NATO for the confrontation, noting that relations between the alliance and Russia the conflict between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia worsened those relations sharply and that Russia was not to blame for it. Things were not rosy before the conflict either. “When we are surrounded by a huge number of military bases and they say everything is in order, we don’t like it,” the Russian president observed.
The British Foreign Office was the first to react to Medvedev’s statement. An official British representative stated that “it would be a mistake” for Russia to break off contacts with NATO at a moment when they are so needed. The alliance headquarters also issued a conciliatory statement. “We believe that cooperation between NATO and Russia has always been and remains mutually beneficial,” a spokesman in the alliance’s press service told Kommersant. The official spokesman recalled, however, that “As was decided at the last NATO meeting, we cannot continue cooperating with Russia s usual, since it is not observing the six-point peace plan. Nonetheless, we will, of course, follow the development of events closely and regularly reassess our attitude toward the events. But we want to keep all channels of communication with Russia. We do not intend to break off any contacts.”
But those contacts are already breaking. According to the Interfax information agency, Russia has not sent its new military representative Army Gen. Alexey Maslov to NATO headquarters. The former chief military representative, Vice Adm. Valentin Kuznetsov, has already returned to Moscow. “In connection with the halt of the functioning of the Russia-NATO Council, we have taken a timeout on the military line with the alliance. It is hard to say today the time when Gen. Maslov will go to Brussels,” the Interfax source said.
At the meeting of the government presidium yesterday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin instructed First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov to “clarify the issue of Russia’s accession to the WTO.” The prime minister noted that “Our economy, its individual sectors and, most of all, agriculture are bearing a high enough load. We do not see or feel hardly any pluses. That does not mean that we should refuse strategic movement in the WTO, but it is necessary to clarify relations with our partners.”
Shuvalov has already attained some clarity. A few hours later, he announced that Russia is certain that it will not join the WTO before the end of the year. He has a plan. In spite of the fact that mainly technical issues remain to be settled in negotiations, Shuvalov quickly promised to “inform a number of our partners in the WTO of the renunciation of agreements that contradict its interests.” He promised to explain in more detail in the report he sent to the prime minister yesterday.
A high-placed representative of the Ministry of Economic Development explained to Kommersant that Shuvalov had in mind no more than ten agreements “beginning with trade in meat, elements of aviation technology and ending with questions of intellectual property.” He continued, “They were all concluded with the understanding that our partners would help us complete the WTO accession process quickly… Our partners told us that and those agreements are in the balance.” Shuvalov explained that Russia intends to begin negotiations with “its main trading partners” in the WTO on those agreements so that “those obligations that we consider restrictive for our economy were suspended until such time as Russia is a full member of the WTO.”
Kommersant learned at the Ministry of Economic Development that the accession process for Russia will not stop; on the contrary, the technical possibility of Russia’s quick entry into the WTO remains, “if the process is maximally isolated from politics.” After the government makes a list of “inexpedient” agreements and the countries that proposed them, bilateral consultations will be held with the interested partners on those specific issues. Consultations are planned in Geneva on September 18 with representatives of the working group on Russia’s accession to the WTO. The list of those agreements will be clear by then. The list is not being made public, and the government, when it made the decision to lower duties on aviation equipment, for example, or to set quotas on meat imports from the European Union, did not formally motivate its decisions on the agreements made at bilateral negotiations with the United States in 2006 or with the EU in 2002.
Shuvalov already had a report on the topic in hand yesterday that required no less than two weeks’ preparation time. So yesterday’s discussion at the presidium was not likely off the cuff. Putin’s statement was preceded by U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza’s assertion that Russian actions in Georgia could cost it U.S. support in the WTO.
At WTO headquarters, they declined to comment on Putin’s words. An anonymous representative of the WTO secretariat told Kommersant only that there have been no precedents for that in the organization. “Russia is one of the candidate countries that, as a gesture of goodwill, are taking on obligations before its accession,” he said. “It has the right to renounce them. However, the process of accession to the WTO assumes the easy course of negotiations in search of mutually acceptable agreement. Of course, Russia is in a unique situation, but Russia’s decision can hardly be considered a normal thing.”
Russian leaders can be expected to make new harsh statements on individual economic and political issues in the coming days and on relations with the West as a whole. There are plenty of causes for them.
First, the president has to react in the next few days to the State Duma and Federation Council appeals to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The logic of the political process makes a positive answer obvious so far. But the format remains unknown. It could be a full session of the Security Council or an official statement by the president or something else.
Second, Rogozin will present at a press conference in Moscow today proposals for Russia’s further cooperation with NATO that have been conciliated with the president.
While considering breaking off relations with former partners, Russia is also searching for new ones. The meeting between Medvedev and Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin yesterday was indicative.
The meeting began with harsh statements by Medvedev that would have been more characteristic of Putin. Mentioning that “the Georgian leadership seems to have lost its mind,” the Russian president told his Moldovan colleague that “now is the time when there are chances and very good possibilities for the solution of the Transdniestria problem.” Medvedev even stressed that “Russia is ready to make every effort for the final settlement of the Transdniestrian crisis.” Such a statement can be considered unprecedented. Russian officials did not promise a “final” solution to the problem of Transdniestria even when they were preparing the 2003 settlement between Chisinau and Tiraspol that later became known as the “Kozak memorandum,” after Dmitry Kozak, who was deputy chief of the presidential executive staff at the time. The Russian and Moldovan leaders agreed yesterday that negotiations would be held in the near future with the participation of all interested parties. The next step, apparently, will be a meeting between Medvedev and Transdniestrian President Igor Smirnov, on which there is already an agreement in principle.
Thus, against the background of the latest actions by Russian authorities directed toward the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Moscow has deftly shown that it knows how to show its gratitude to those post-Soviet republics whose leaders are prepared to renounce NATO forever. Moldova is the main one of those countries. Its authorities have repeatedly stated their readiness to sign an international declaration guaranteeing the perpetual neutrality of the country and have tried in recent months to distance themselves from the GUAM organization (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova).
Russian diplomats are holding out certain hope for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, which begins on August 28 and at which the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will be present. The heads of Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia, the observer states in the SCO, are also expected in Dushanbe.
Head of the Russian Academy of Sciences Center for International Security Alexey Arbatov thinks that the break between Russia and NATO will become “a big holiday for international terrorism” and give “new impetus to the proliferation of nuclear arms.” In the opinion of editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in International Affairs Fedor Lukyanov, confrontation between Russia and NATO will sooner or later have a detrimental effect, but only if Russia and NATO continue to cooperate on the transit of cargo to Afghanistan.
Suzanna Farizova, Sochi; Vladimir Solovyev, Petr Netreba, Igor Sedykh, Geneva; Dmitry Butrin, Mikhail Zygar, Pavel Koshkin
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 26, 2008
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