MOSCOW, October 19 (RIA Novosti) The West doing Russia's dirty work for the first time / Russia can no longer rely on Energy Charter to protect its interests / Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus to conduct separate WTO accession talks / Gazprom to begin Sakhalin-3 development ahead of time

Kommersant

The West doing Russia's dirty work for the first time

The situation in Afghanistan looks like a geopolitical trap. None of the key problems on the Afghan agenda has been resolved over the eight years of the NATO operation there, mostly conducted by U.S. and British troops. Moreover, the general trend is negative, a Russian analyst writes.

Sergei Markedonov, an analyst at the Institute of Political and Military Analysis, writes that the project of bringing democracy to and stabilizing Afghanistan has failed. However, Russia should not be happy with the failure of its traditional "frenemy," the United States, especially since they have agreed to reset bilateral relations.

Afghanistan, although located away from Russia, is exerting substantial influence on the political situation in Russia. Firstly, it is a drug challenge, and secondly, it borders on three Central Asian members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Since the Afghan flame can burn post-Soviet states in Central Asia, just as it nearly scorched Tajikistan in 1991-1992, Russia should be aware of the danger of a powerful Islamic front on its border.

And thirdly, Afghanistan cannot be left to its own devices, and it will not allow the international community to do that. Afghanistan "hit" Russia in 1992 on the Afghan-Tajik border. The signing of the Collective Security Treaty by Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in May 1992 in Tashkent was largely a response to the "export of Afghanistan" to the CIS.

Can the Collective Security Treaty Organization, set up in 2002, stop the "Afghan export" if the United States and Britain fail in that country? This is not a rhetorical question at all.

We must admit that the West has agreed to do Russia's dirty work for the first time in history, Markedonov writes. It was usually vice versa in the past. Russia sent two armies to distract Germans and to help Franco-British troops ensure the "Miracle of the Marne" in September 1914. The Soviet Union did its best to minimize the Allies' losses in the Ardennes Offensive (the Battle of the Bulge) in late 1944, when the Germans caught the Allies by surprise.

Today the West is prepared to share Russia's responsibility for security in Central Asia. And who knows, asks Markedonov, might Russia not have had to deal with Afghanistan single-handed if not for the U.S.-led NATO operation in that permanently explosive country?

Vremya Novostei

Russia can no longer rely on Energy Charter to protect its interests

Tuesday is the final, 60th day since the government of Portugal (the Energy Charter depository) registered Russia's notification of its decision to terminate its provisional application of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT).

The gesture ultimately proved more political than substantive: Russia has not actually withdrawn from the treaty and will still be bound by its terms for 20 years after the termination of its provisional application.

Russia will officially terminate the provisional application of the ECT, but formally will remain a signatory. So far, there have been three such countries - Norway, Australia and Iceland. Belarus is now the only country maintaining the provisional application regime.

Moscow's harsh criticism of the ECT was provoked by January's gas conflict with Ukraine. The charter failed to help, and did not prevent the disruption in gas transit or at the very least punish those to blame.

In the spring, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin first mentioned the possibility of withdrawing Russia's signature. In April, Moscow proposed to the international community a Conceptual Approach to the New Legal Framework for Energy Cooperation. The response was predictably restrained. European partners promised they would look at Russia's proposals, but insisted that Russia's withdrawal from the Energy Charter was unacceptable.

"We have lost nothing by terminating the ECT provisional application, but our next goal is to promote our initiatives to improve international energy cooperation. We have not achieved much here yet. No one in the West wants Russian leadership here," said Vladimir Feigin, director of Moscow's Institute of Energy and Finance.

He added that Russia has put itself in a position where it no longer has the possibility of relying on the charter to protect its own interests.

Andrei Konoplyanik, who has long served as Deputy Secretary General of the Energy Charter Secretariat, believes Russia can and must continue negotiating the modernization of the ECT in the light of amendments to the existing text and new initiatives. However, he does not rule out that it would be more difficult to do so formally now, while finding an alternative arena to discuss multilateral international energy cooperation is virtually impossible.

Kommersant, Vedomosti

Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus to conduct separate WTO accession talks

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's June announcement that Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan would apply for WTO membership as a single body has been actually invalidated.

The three countries, which have agreed to form a Customs Union, plan to join the World Trade Organization simultaneously but will hold separate accession talks. However, the new plan will also fall through if Russia or Kazakhstan approaches the coveted goal ahead of Belarus.

Representatives of the three countries said that if they tried to join the WTO as a single body, the Customs Union would be judged in accordance with Article 24 of the GATT, "Territorial Application; Frontier Traffic; Customs Unions and Free Trade Areas." The 17 customs unions operating within the WTO have not passed the scrutiny, and the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan could easily join the list of the losers.

Article 24 also provides that, regardless of political status, any area that maintains its own tariffs and commercial regulations may be treated as a contracting party.

It will be extremely difficult for Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan to prove that they have a common trade policy when they have none.

The three countries have notified their partners that separate WTO accession talks would be conducted on the basis of achievements reached by Russia during its talks on access to the commodities market, the sphere regulated by customs unions.

In practice, this means that Belarus is likely to conduct accession talks on the basis of Russia's agreements, while Kazakhstan, which has signed bilateral agreements with 22 of 29 countries, will have to conduct additional talks since part of its agreements with WTO member states have been signed at a lower level than Russia's agreements.

The parties to the Customs Union, which is to become effective in early 2010, still plan to join the WTO simultaneously. But their plans are based only on their unofficial agreements, and it is unclear how this goal can be attained in practice. If Russia or Kazakhstan manages to accelerate their accession talks, they will have to choose between joining the organization or waiting for the lagging partner, Belarus, which has not made any noticeable progress at its accession talks since 1997.

Maxim Medvedkov, Russia's chief negotiator at the WTO talks, remains optimistic. He said: "I am almost confident that we will join before I reach my pension age, which is still eight years away."

RBC Daily

Gazprom to begin Sakhalin-3 development ahead of time

Russian state gas monopoly Gazprom will begin the development of the Kirinskoye gas condensate deposit two years earlier than planned, Alexander Mandel, head of Gazprom's subsidiary that oversees offshore projects, said at a Murmansk international economic forum.

The decision to start early may be a sign that Gazprom has failed to agree with the American operator of Sakhalin-1 on gas supplies to the domestic market.

The Kirinskoye field is part of the Sakhalin-3 offshore project. Its ÀÂÑ1+Ñ2 gas reserves are estimated at 75.4 billion cubic meters and 8.6 million metric tons of gas condensate. Gazprom was granted the license without formal bidding.

In Mandel's words, Gazprom can move the date for the field's commissioning from early 2014 to late 2011 or early 2012, but the precise date would depend on the demand for gas in Russia's Far Eastern regions. The fuel can be delivered to consumers through the Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok major trunk pipeline linking offshore gas fields off the island of Sakhalin with the port of Vladivostok that Gazprom plans to open in 2011.

The pipeline was initially planned to deliver gas from Sakhalin-1. However, Gazprom has failed to reach an agreement with the project operator, U.S. ExxonMobil Corp. The Russian monopoly is still in talks with the Sakhalin-1 consortium, as it needs gas to fill the pipeline, but no longer seems very confident.

Alexander Nazarov, an analyst with the Metropol investment company, does not believe Russia's Far East will need gas from both Sakhalin projects.

If the timeframe of Sakhalin-3 development really depends on consumer demand, as the Gazprom spokesman said, Kirinskoye is unlikely to go onstream even in 2014.

It is possible that Gazprom is counting on exports to China and Southeast Asia, said Mikhail Korchemkin, director of the East European Gas Analysis consultancy. However, this plan's profitability is questionable. China is unlikely to agree to pay more than $150-$170 for 1,000 cu m, which is unacceptable to Gazprom.

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