MOSCOW, January 9 (RIA Novosti) America adopts harder line on Russia /Minsk to wage "commercial war" against Moscow/Russian-Belarusian differences may obstruct ABM system/Export of Russian black caviar to resume in 2007
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Gazeta.ru
America adopts harder line on Russia
The United States has imposed sanctions on Russian state-run arms dealer Rosoboronexport and two military design bureaus. All indications are that American authorities are taking revenge on Russia for its weapons supplies to Iran, Syria and Venezuela.
The sanctions date from December 28 and will last for two years. The companies affected include Rosoboronexport, the Tula Instrument Making Design Bureau and the Kolomna Machine Building Design Bureau.
The U.S. State Department believes the Russian companies could have sold Kornet and Metis antitank systems to Syria in 2002, because they were found in Lebanon when Israeli troops invaded last summer.
America estimates that contracts for deliveries of high-technology weapons of all kinds to Syria are worth $9.7 billion.
Washington is also unhappy about Russia's arms deals with Venezuela, one of the chief critics of the U.S. in Latin America. Russian exporters have made just over $3 billion from their contracts with that country.
That is the second attempt by American authorities to hamper Russian defense industry manufacturers.
In August 2006, the State Department targeted Rosoboronexport and the Sukhoi company, charging them with collaboration with Iran.
In October, it denied them a license to deliver components for the Sukhoi SuperJet100 regional project to two American companies, Hamilton Sundstrand and B/E Aerospace.
Following a meeting between presidents Putin and Bush, however, the sanctions against Sukhoi were lifted. But they stayed in place against Rosoboronexport.
However, the move failed to dent Rosoboronexport's earnings - 2006 was a very successful year for the Russian arms seller.
In December, President Putin, for example, signed a decree making Rosoboronexport Russia's only weapons exporter.
The company also scaled itself up by buying new assets - it came into possession of the world's largest titanium producer, VSMPO-Avisma, and obtained a controlling stake in the helicopter holding Oboronprom.
Rosoboronexport head Sergei Chemezov said his company is planning a joint venture with the U.S. company Boeing as a VSMPO-Avisma shareholder.
Experts said the next step by Russia may be a holding based on Rosoboronexport and stakes from specialized metal suppliers of the aerospace and defense units that produce tungsten, molybdenum and other rare but strategic metals for the defense sector.
And the preconditions are all there. Chemezov has been made head of the Russian Union of Machine Builders, which grew from 16 to 66 members last year.
It now includes VAZ, KamAZ, Severnaya Verf, Sevmashpredpriyatiye, Sukhoi and Uralvagonzavod. All this is bound to boost Rosoboronexport, despite American sanctions.
Gazeta
Minsk to wage "commercial war" against Moscow
The warning by Alexander Lukashenko, who said after the first gas war between Russia and Belarus in 2004 that bilateral relations had been "poisoned by gas" for good, turned out to be prophetic.
Three years on, Moscow and Minsk have resumed "military operations" as Belarus cancelled the transit of Russian oil to Germany and Poland.
The official reason for the embargo on Russian oil is Transneft's refusal to pay a $45 transit fee that Minsk introduced unilaterally.
Semyon Vainshtok, president of the Russian pipeline monopoly, has insisted that about 79,000 metric tons of oil have been illegally siphoned off from the Druzhba pipeline in the two days since January 6.
Russia's deputy economic development and trade minister, Andrei Sharonov, has delivered a note to the Belarusian ambassador to Moscow demanding that the "transit fees" be cancelled.
The official said he will not sit down at the negotiating table with his Belarusian counterparts until the illegal fees are rescinded.
Sources in the Russian Justice Ministry are also indignant at the additional fees for oil transit, which total about 70 million metric tons a year.
"It is unacceptable to introduce a transit fee of $45, as it contradicts agreements on the inadmissibility of discrimination within the CIS and the Union State," a source in the Justice Ministry said.
"Nor is it reasonable to make Russia pay for goods which do not belong to Belarus but cross its territory. Nothing of the kind has ever taken place in the world," he said.
With Russia and Belarus at war, Ukraine has every reason to take advantage of the situation. Kiev hopes to increase its annual transit of Russian oil from 9 to 12 million metric tons.
The transit fees introduced by Lukashenko are a forced measure. In December the Russian government actually abolished free trade with Belarus by introducing a single export duty on oil for Minsk.
As a result, the 19.2 million metric tons of oil, which Belarusian oil refineries refine and export at a profit, rose in price by $180 per ton. This is a catastrophe for the Belarusian economy.
Experts acknowledge that since 2000 the Russian budget has been losing $3-4 billion due to a difference between Russian and Belarusian export duties on petrochemicals.
The December decision is tough political pressure on Lukashenko, who has until recently refused to sign a gas contract under which his country would receive gas at $100 per 1,000 cubic meters.
Moskovsky Komsomolets
Russian-Belarusian differences may obstruct ABM system
Now that Russian-Belarusian relations in the oil and gas sphere have soured, bilateral military relations may also worsen as Minsk demands payment for Russian military facilities in Belarus.
That demand concerns primarily the Uzel Baranovichi installation and its Volga early-warning radar, which has a 120-degree scanning radius able to detect ballistic missile launches in Germany, France and the United Kingdom, and which tracks spacecraft several thousand kilometers away.
Also affected would be the submarine control facility in Vileika in the Minsk District.
The Uzel Baranovichi site assumed a vital importance in the 1990s after Russia closed its early-warning radar station in Skrunde, Latvia.
Colonel General Pavel Kozlovsky, the former Defense Minister of Belarus, said that without the Baranovichi base, Russia would not be able to control its western sector, because other radars have a range of just 60 kilometers and would be unable to warn air defense and anti-ballistic missile units in time.
Experts said Russia would still need the more powerful Baranovichi radar even after it commissions an early-warning radar, now on experimental combat duty near St. Petersburg, next year, because the Belarusian installation is located several hundred kilometers further west.
Moscow, which still uses the radar free of charge, has allowed Belarusian air defense units to test fire S-300 surface-to-air missiles at Russian ranges without cost.
Russia uses several installations, including the Vileika facility, to keep an eye on its submarines around the world. However, Moscow would lose control over large areas of the ocean if Minsk shuts the facility down.
Moscow and Minsk will negotiate on the issue, although Russian politicians have not yet estimated the value of both facilities.
Instead of building similar military installations near Smolensk, Russia would find it more profitable to supply the required amount of gas to Belarus free of charge for the next 50 years, Kozlovsky said.
Gazeta
Export of Russian black caviar to resume in 2007
After a yearlong ban, Russian black caviar will once again be sold on the world market. Experts said the decision to either ban or allow the export of Russian caviar will have little effect on the protection of rare fish species.
On January 1, 2007, CITES (the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna) lifted the moratorium on the export of Russian sturgeon caviar, which was imposed in early 2006.
The official reason for the moratorium on the export of sturgeon and caviar harvested in the Black and Caspian seas was the impossibility of limiting fish catch in 2006, because Russia had not provided data on the sturgeon population and measures to protect it.
"Russia has now allegedly provided the required information, which allowed for the lifting of the ban," said Vladislav Kochetkov, an analyst with the Finam brokerage. "But the real reason is to limit illegal exports, which have soared during the moratorium."
Some analysts said the yearlong moratorium also had political reasons, in that the absence of Russian caviar on the global market benefited Iran.
Iran and the Soviet Union were the only two countries harvesting Caspian sturgeon and caviar during the Soviet period.
In the 1980s, Soviet farms provided some 200-250 metric tons of black caviar to the world market, but the situation changed dramatically after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, allowing Iran to strengthen its standing on the caviar market and to raise exports to 200 metric tons a year.
CITES also played into the hands of Iran by introducing 80% cuts on catch quotas beginning in 2000 on all Caspian countries, with the exception of Iran.
Market analysts said the ban did not help Russia eradicate poaching. According to the most optimistic expert assessments, illegal catch satisfies more than 90% of the domestic demand for black caviar.
"Since the Russian caviar market is mostly illegal, it is demand that has been setting the price," Kochetkov said. "Last year, the price for sturgeon caviar has grown 15-20% and no serious improvements are likely this year."
