MOSCOW, November 7 (RIA Novosti) Moscow and Washington will not team up in Europe / United States plans to deploy missile defense elements in Caucasus / Disputes loom before Russia-EU aviation summit / Britain retaliates against Gazprom in Turkmenistan / Baghdad pushing Moscow to write off Iraq's debt
Izvestia, Gazeta.ru, RBC Daily, Moskovsky Komsomolets, Gazeta
Moscow and Washington will not team up in Europe
The United States made a tempting offer to Moscow shortly before its parliament was to vote on suspending the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty.
According to U.S. media, the offer is part of a broader deal also involving Kosovo and Iran. Russian experts say the White House has planned the move to demonstrate the flexibility of its policy compared with the Kremlin's stiff and uncompromising stance.
Observers say the United States plans to offer vague prospects of considering ratifying the CFE Treaty in exchange for practical concessions from Russia, above all regarding Kosovo independence and tough sanctions against Iran (and possibly a military intervention). Washington also expects Russia to honor the Istanbul agreements and pull its peacekeepers out of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transdnestr.
Although conventional arms no longer matter much, the fact of total Western control will drive Moscow into a political corner. "Foreign states will control our operations on our own territory," a high-ranking source told the Izvestia daily.
NATO's military superiority over Russia is a fact, and the CFE Treaty has not been effective for a long time.
Vladimir Yevseyev, an expert with the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations, told Gazeta.ru: "The crucial thing is not military ceilings, but broad monitoring stipulated in the CFE Treaty. According to its terms, signatories cannot deny entry to foreign inspectors."
"They had promised to ratify the CFE Treaty if Russia honored the Istanbul agreements," he said. "But Russia knows that if it complies, it may soon face other complaints, for example about insufficient democracy."
Boris Makarenko, deputy director general of the Center for Political Technologies, a Moscow think tank, said: "The sides' positions seem inflexible, but this is not true; in fact, energetic bargaining is underway."
If Russia refuses to respond to the State Department's offer, it will show that its threat to withdraw from the CFE Treaty is an instrument of diplomatic pressure on the partners over other, more important issues, such as Washington's missile shield in Europe, the analyst said.
Vedomosti
United States plans to deploy missile defense elements in Caucasus
As Russia is holding consultations on its radars in Gabala in northeast Azerbaijan and Armavir in southern Russia, the U.S. is nursing schemes of planting missile defense facilities to the south of Russia in addition to the missile base in Poland and the radar in the Czech Republic.
In early spring, even before Russian President Vladimir Putin made a proposal on a radar station in Gabala in May, Director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency Lt Gen Henry A. Obering had mentioned his country's idea of placing a radar in the Caucasus.
In late October, Russian journalists were shown slides of the missile defense system in Europe at Poland's national security bureau (BBN), one of them displaying a mobile radar in the Caspian region. A BBN official said the radar appeared on the slide accidentally. However, the same radar is plotted on the scheme posted on the MDA website, -X-band radar which can be mounted on a sea or ground-based mobile platform to detect launched missiles early and target antimissiles with great precision.
The U.S. MDA, Defense Department and State Department declined to answer Vedomosti's questions. A source in Russia's Defense Ministry only said that no U.S. radar in the Caucasus or the Caspian region had been mentioned at the U.S.-Russia talks.
The source said the radar, if installed, would enable the United States to track the launches of non-existent long-range Iranian missiles and monitor Russian test grounds in the Astrakhan Region and Kazakhstan, where new weapon systems are tested.
However, if the U.S. had serious plans, the Russian military would have long ago informed the politicians, said Viktor Ozerov, head of the Federation Council's committee for security and defense issues.
The U.S. has satellites to track Iranian missile launches, so the suggestion that the mobile radar is crucial for early warning sounds unconvincing, according to Anatoly Dyakov, director of the Center for Arms Control at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. But, if they wanted to cover Russia's entire territory with a radar field, then a radar in that location would be of much help. Radars are being installed in the Far East, and yet another one would be useful somewhere in Mongolia.
It is part of a classical nuclear strategy, said expert Ivan Safranchuk. The installment of a U.S. radar in the Caucasus will look like building an infrastructure which could be later used against Russia, he added.
Kommersant
Disputes loom before Russia-EU aviation summit
The Russia-EU aviation summit, slated for November 16-17 in Moscow, may be called off. Sources in Russian airlines and the Transport Ministry said Brussels wanted Moscow to scrap trans-Siberian over-flight fees for foreign carriers. According to experts, this became a political, rather than economic, issue long ago.
Lev Koshlyakov, deputy CEO of Russian flagship air carrier Aeroflot, said the summit could be called off, that such events were planned in advance, and that his company had not yet been invited.
A source in a Russian company said the EU delegation had insisted that Russia allow European air carriers not to pay for trans-Siberian flights and linked the upcoming summit with this decision.
In November 2006, the European Union and Russia agreed on a system for over-flight charges for Asia-bound European airliners using Russian airspace. However, this agreement has not yet entered into force because the Russian government still does not agree phase out the payments by 2013.
Last year, Aeroflot received $420 million in trans-Siberian over-flight fees.
Boris Rybak, head of Infomost aviation consultancy, said the EU linked this issue with the signing of a new Russia-EU cooperation agreement and Moscow's accession to the World Trade Organization, and that the bloc did want to hold the summit unless talks on over-flight fees made headway.
Bank of Moscow analyst Mikhail Lyamin said the EU could pressure Moscow on over-flight charges and obtain an advantage in other spheres, including the allocation of stakes in a new joint venture that will manufacture Airbus components in Russia.
Although there are no plans to sign important contracts at the summit, Rybak said Russia-EU relations would be soured if the summit did not take place.
He said the EU could retaliate against Russian commercial airlines if the government did not abide by the 2006 agreement.
Gazeta.ru
Britain retaliates against Gazprom in Turkmenistan
According to the British press, Britain has signed a secret energy deal with Turkmenistan which may deprive Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom of access to Turkmen gas and thus render its two major gas pipeline projects for Europe useless. Experts think that Britain has unleashed an information campaign against Gazprom.
It is in the British companies' interests to change the route of Turkmen gas supplies, but, analysts say, no real agreement has been signed yet. Information on a memorandum of understanding with Turkmenistan was published in The Times which is famous for its information "throw ins", therefore a conclusion can be made that an information campaign aimed at weakening Gazprom's influence has begun, said Dmitry Abzalov, an expert for the Center of Current Political Studies. No concrete document has been signed yet, but British Petroleum (BP) has long been negotiating the diversification of gas supply routes with Turkmenistan.
BP's aim is to lobby the US-European Nabucco pipeline project, the direct rival to the Russian Caspian pipeline project. According to Abzalov, BP was forced to do this because Gazprom's participation in the Kovykta gas field development project (Irkutsk Region, Siberia) will considerably diminish BP's proven reserves. If BP succeeds in its negotiations with Turkmenistan, it will manage to restore its key indicators and retaliate against Gazprom for Kovykta. "With Turkmen gas flowing via Nabucco, the idea of 'gas tongs' with which Gazprom have been trying to grip Europe for several years now will prove a failure and Gazprom's two projects - the Blue Stream-2 and the North-European gas pipeline (Nord Stream) - will become useless," the expert said.
If Gazprom loses Turkmen gas, it will have to step up the development of its shelf deposits and the Kovykta field and it does not have funds to do this now. Gazprom has not launched the development of the Shtokman and Kovykta gas condensate deposits as it could meet its obligations with the help of Turkmen gas supplies, Abzalov noted.
Vremya Novostei
Baghdad pushing Moscow to write off Iraq's debt
Iraq's Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani is claiming that the Iraqi government no longer considers LUKoil's contract to develop the giant Western Qurna-2 oil deposit valid. But it looks as if this is only part of the bargaining between Moscow and Baghdad over the issue of Iraqi sovereign debt.
Earlier, too, Iraq had said the LUKoil contract was null and void and the Russian company, under a new law on oil, would have to take part in all tenders under the general regulations. But this law is not yet passed: the Iraqi parliament has been unable to reach a consensus for more than a year now, and Mr. al-Shahristani appears to be doing no more than expressing the stand of the law's drafters.
This year, both Russian and Iraqi officials have begun to say at an unofficial level that they link the issue of LUKoil's rights to Iraqi oil with a writing off of Baghdad's sovereign debt to Moscow totaling $13 billion.
Russia, like all Paris Club members, has undertaken to pardon 80% of the debt in one stroke and 20% by degrees, but things got stalled over documents not being available to fulfill the obligation.
The reason why Russian-Iraqi relations are floundering is that neither side risks taking the first step.
Moscow is afraid of pardoning the debt in case the situation changes and the LUKoil contract is canceled, with the company getting nothing.
Baghdad is refusing to honor the contract unless there are guarantees the debt will be written off; and its ministers, by their statements, are provoking Russia to take the first step.
LUKoil yesterday said in a statement that it had received no notice of a Western Qurna-2 contract termination.
Earlier, LUKoil had repeatedly said the contract was sound because its cancelation was only possible at the Geneva International Court, to which no one had appealed.
RIA Novosti is not responsible for the content of outside sources.
