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MOSCOW, May 31 (RIA Novosti) Russia and U.S. at loggerheads again/Army reforms - will they really happen?/Gazprom eyeing up Slovenian assets/Oligarchs look east, mull Mongolia moves/Bird flu vaccine tested on humans/Communications breakdown in the justices sphere?

(RIA Novosti does not accept responsibility for articles in the Russian press)

Nezavisimaya Gazeta

Russia, United States on the brink of cold war - expert

The current state of Russian-American relations is a matter of serious concern, a Russian political scientist told popular daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Although no new cold war has begun, we are balancing on the edge. Given that 2008 will see presidential elections in both countries, this situation cannot last long.
Sergei Rogov, director of the Institute of US and Canadian Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said Washington unilaterally saw the end of the Cold War as a victory for the U.S. and the demise of its geopolitical rival, the Soviet Union. It formulated the objective of precluding the appearance of a comparable rival, which has become the crux of its strategy.
Rogov said the two countries had initiated a strategic partnership because they faced common threats - international terrorism and nuclear proliferation. But the partnership has been largely declarative, based on personal relations between the countries' leaders, without institutions for military and political cooperation comparable to the mechanisms for U.S. relations with its NATO allies.
Russian-American relations also lack an economic foundation. Rogov said the U.S. had developed trade and economic relations with China, which is a factor of stability. Despite their ideological and geopolitical differences, the United States and China depend on each other. This element is lacking in Russia-U.S. relations.
Therefore, relations are extremely vulnerable, even with regard to differences over issues of minor importance.
"Buddy" relations between George Bush and Vladimir Putin have had a positive effect on bilateral relations, but 2008, when the two presidents will leave office, may be a watershed.
Rogov said the Cold War had not started overnight, and a new cold war could be provoked by Ukraine's admission to NATO. This will not strengthen the bloc, but it will be an attempt to bury Russia as a great power and isolate it in Europe.
Ukraine joining NATO would be a serious geopolitical event and a deliberate attempt to push Russia into the Middle Ages and to the role of a third-rate player on the international scene, Rogov said.

Gazeta

Defense ministry denies plans to reform army

Russia's Defense Ministry has denied press reports that it plans to scrap the current system of military districts and set up regional command centers instead. But experts say a plan to adopt a territorial principle for army organization has already been referred to the president for approval as the supreme commander-in-chief.
Colonel Vyacheslav Sedov, an official Defense Ministry spokesman, said no decisions were made. But he conceded some pilot reforms were already under way in the Lake Baikal region in Eastern Siberia.
Chief of the General Staff Yury Baluyevsky has repeatedly said that Russia is not going to take on NATO and will not tighten its belt to maintain military parity. This means the ministry's top leadership is prioritizing structural optimization as a way to enhance combat capacity, and regional command centers could be a weighty argument for military reform skeptics.
News leaks from the ministry say that plans to set up regional centers were aired at the end of last year. But the General Staff came up against stiff resistance from military district commanders and commanders-in-chief, who argued that the organizational period might take several years and debilitate troops.
Experts say the Ministry not only has a plan in hand to reorganize the army along territorial lines, but has also submitted it to the president.
"Putin must endorse the plan in the first place," said retired Colonel General Viktor Yesin, first vice president of the Academy of Security, Defense and Law Enforcement. "Before that is done, Baluyevsky has to maneuver to calm opposition from the generals."
As a reformer, Yesin said, Baluyevsky is at a disadvantage compared with the conservative generals because he is refusing to discuss army reform in public.
"Why all these leaks and denials?" Yesin said. "Reform is essential for the whole of society and should be debated publicly."

Vedomosti

Gazprom may continue overseas expansion

Russian gas monopolist Gazprom is considering buying assets in Slovenia. The Slovenian authorities are selling the Nafta Lendava oil refinery and are also ready to invite the Russian gas giant to build gas power stations in the country, in exchange for more Russian gas.
Nafta Lendava's activities include marketing of oil products and drilling of oil wells. The plant is 100% state-owned, and has annual revenues of $78 million. According to a Slovenian Economics Ministry official, LUKoil has also shown interest in the company. LUKoil declined to comment.
"Why does Gazprom need a Slovenian refinery?" asked Vladimir Milov, president of the Institute for Energy Policy, adding that the Slovenian government's controlling stake in gas distributor Geoplin d.o.o. Ljubljana would be more lucrative to Gazprom. The possibility of the government selling the stake is being actively debated in Slovenia, he said.
Gazprom would like to have access to end customers in Europe, so it may also show interest in Slovenian gas operators, said Sergei Suverov of Gazprombank. Geoplin d.o.o. Ljubljana is an old partner of Gazprom - last year, it signed a new gas supply agreement for 2007-2015 with Gazexport, the Russian gas giant's export arm.
However, the Slovenian economics ministry official said selling the stake is not a priority for his country, although it would like to involve Gazprom in the construction of gas power stations in the future.
The Slovenian authorities have already been considering the possibility for a few years, said Andrei Zubkov, an analyst with Trust investment bank. The project may prove beneficial for Gazprom, he said, because Slovenia has a high level of income. In addition, it borders on energy-hungry Italy, a potential destination for electricity exports.
Slovenia's energy system is primarily based on hydro power stations with a capacity of 2,800MW, while there is also a 676MW NPP on the border with Croatia and four thermal power stations with an aggregate capacity of 1,262 MW, the bulk of which is produced by coal-fired plants.

Kommersant

Russian oligarchs looking to tap Mongolia for coal and uranium

Russian authorities are increasingly giving their backing to Severstal owner Alexei Mordashov's projects. Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov recently said he is fully behind a merger between Severstal, Russia's top steelmaker, and world No. 2 Arcelor - a deal contested by world leader Mittal Steel. Yesterday news broke that Mordashov had gained President Vladimir Putin's support for negotiations for part ownership of Mongolia's biggest coal deposit, Tavan Tolgoi. However, it is quite probably that Mordashov will have a rival in Mongolia as well.
The field's resources are estimated by experts at 6 billion tons of coal - or roughly three years worth of Chinese coal imports - with 40% being high-calorie coking coal. Some investors are also eyeing the field, including in Japan and China.
Sources in the Russian government said the Severstal chief executive sent a letter to Putin in the middle of May in which he said that by investing $1.5 billion Severstal Group could up its output to 20 million tons a year and obtain $1 billion in sales.
In his letter, Mordashov said official backing could be the key factor for his group to gain control over Tavan Tolgoi. He asked Putin to give instructions to government ministries and ministerial departments, and also to write personally to Mongolian President Nambaryn Enkhbayar. Sources say on May 16 the letter got a positive endorsement.
But sources also say that Tavan Tolgoi is being lined up by another Russian billionaire - Viktor Vekselberg - who is likewise seeking official backing to get his hands on the deposit, and on Mongolian uranium fields as well.
Vekselberg's interest in coal and uranium is justified, analysts said.
"By 2010, China will have become a net importer of coal, and it is wise to look to Mongolia, whose coal is easy to transport to China," says Alexei Morozov of UBS.
A specialist on geological prospecting in Mongolia now working as a consultant with a major Russian ministerial department said Vekselberg is more interested in uranium. According to the Research Institute of Minerals, Russia's uranium requirements will almost double by 2020, to 28,000 tons a year.

Gazeta.ru

Moscow doctors testing bird-flu vaccine on humans

Doctors have started testing the first Russian bird flu vaccine on humans, in the hope of finding out by August whether it can counteract the lethal H5N1 strain. But virologists say such tests are pointless, because it is still unclear which strain of the virus will start killing large numbers of humans.
Science and Production Association Mikrogen, a state-owned enterprise that produces bacterial preparations, developed this vaccine in conjunction with a flu research institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, based on the H5N1 strain from Vietnam that is recommended for use in vaccines by the World Health Organization. The new vaccine was first tested on rats, and prevented bird flu in 95% of cases. Mikrogen director Anton Katlinsky said he was cautiously optimistic about the new vaccine after the rat tests.
Pyotr Deryabin, deputy head of research at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Ivanovsky Virology Institute, said it was pointless to test the new vaccine on humans.
"Such tests would make sense if there was an ongoing epidemic of a specific virus strain, but no one can yet say for sure whether the H5N1 strain will be the one to cause a pandemic," Deryabin told the paper. He said it normally takes at least three to four years to launch clinical tests of any new medication.
But Mikrogen representatives said that streamlined production of an H5N1 vaccine would make it easy to create a vaccine against a pandemic virus.
"If necessary, it would take us about 45 days to produce the first batch of the new anti-viral vaccine," said Katlinsky. Production could start as soon as a mutation of the virus began to pass from human to human.
WHO officials have denied reports of possible human-to-human transmission between members of an Indonesian family, while experts have said they could not accurately predict the rate at which bird flu might spread globally in the next month and a half.
Doctors still have no plans to vaccinate the entire Russian population.
"There is no need for this, because we are not involved in the vaccine business. The trade and sanitation inspectorate will choose specific territories for vaccination in case of possible human-to-human transmission," said Oleg Kiselyov, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Influenza Institute.

Izvestia

Foreign justice becoming weapon in Russian corporate wars - experts

European courts are increasingly using charges of corruption against Russian officials as a way to fight Russia's growing weight in the world. And Russian business structures are using it as a weapon in dirty corporate struggles.
The latest ruling has seen the Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce in Zurich, Switzerland, attacking Russian Communications Minister Leonid Reiman. But Russian experts are not convinced by the arguments of European lawyers.
Vagif Guseynov, director of Russian think tank Institute of Strategic Studies and Analysis: Trials abroad are in the interests of rivals both within Russia and outside it. Unfortunately, appeals to foreign justice have become a weapon of corporate wars in the last few years. The attack on Reiman was clearly provoked by the forthcoming privatization of Svyazinvest (Russia's biggest state-owned telecommunication holding). Some market players did not like the policy of the regulating agency (ministry), and have done their best to discredit it.
Shamil Sultanov, member of the lower house of parliament's committee on international affairs: The roots of this scandal are apparent - the privatization of Svyazinvest set for this year. Concerned parties that are not playing fair have decided to provide questionable information in a bid to get better conditions (at the tender).
Sergei Markov, the head of the Moscow-based Institute for Political Studies and member of the Public Chamber: We can see the position of homegrown businessmen who are competing with Reiman, and politicians who are aiming at the government as a whole. Of late, the West has become fearful of Russia's growing role on the world scene.
Nikolai Pavlov, member of the lower house's committee on security: Mikhail Fridman (the owner of Alfa Group) and his structures need a scandal to distract public attention from the flight of Leonid Rozhetsky, who is involved in the disputed sale of a blocking stake in telecom company MegaFon. It appears the oligarchs have been pushed up against the wall, if they have decided to attack Putin's vertical of power.

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