MOSCOW, November 26 (RIA Novosti) Russia, NATO to resume military cooperation in December/New NATO chief's visit unlikely to affect group's relations with Russia/ Deputy suggests police reform/Russia's Central Bank to lower dependence on U.S. dollar

Kommersant

Russia, NATO to resume military cooperation in December

Moscow and NATO have completely ended their 2008 confrontation and are ready to cooperate in military operations.

Both sides plan to resume military cooperation, frozen after the 2008 Russian-Georgian conflict over South Ossetia, at the upcoming meeting of the Russia-NATO Council at foreign minister level, scheduled for December 4 in Brussels.

Mutual friendship will be highlighted by an agreement allowing Russian specialists to service Soviet military equipment in NATO countries and Afghanistan.

Russia's Ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said Moscow expected the upcoming meeting to overhaul the relationship. The question is whether NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen will become a Gorbachev-style politician, Rogozin said.

Rogozin said both Russia and NATO were ready to sign a landmark agreement on servicing Soviet-era military equipment still operated by NATO's former Warsaw Pact members.

Consequently, we will receive a long-awaited opportunity to contact the alliance and its members without using the intermediary services of some Eastern European countries, Rogozin said.

A source at Russia's state arms exporter Rosoboronexport said Russian and NATO negotiators had already discussed the basic provisions of the future document. "We hope the agreement will specify all Soviet military equipment models. The issue at stake is whether NATO is willing to do this," he said.

The source said Russia's defense industry companies would be able to control a vast market because the range of countries operating Soviet military equipment was not limited to Warsaw Pact members.

"Afghanistan also operates our helicopters. We currently cooperate with some NATO members on a bilateral basis. These countries frequently require the consent of NATO leaders, before working with us. There will no longer be any need for this formality after the agreement is signed," the source added.

The Russian Foreign Ministry and Rosoboronexport declined to say anything about specific deadlines for signing the agreement. Both agencies are confident that the document will be signed next year in the context of improving Russian-NATO relations.

Kommersant

New NATO chief's visit unlikely to affect group's relations with Russia

New NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen will visit Moscow in mid-December. However, his visit is unlikely to affect the alliance's relations with Russia, an analyst writes.

According to Ruslan Pukhov, editor-in-chief of Moscow Defense Brief magazine, one cannot say that NATO-Russia relations have become strained, given that they have never been normal in the whole post-Soviet period. The current situation is not much different, which is only natural because the conflicting military-political attitudes and interests of the respective sides are still there.

The North Atlantic alliance was established as a military coalition targeted at the Soviet Union (Russia). Now, with all the geopolitical changes in Europe and the world, NATO's key goal is military protection of its European members, including its new ones, from Russia. One can even go so far as to assert that NATO would have never been established had it not been for the Soviet Union, Pukhov said.

The past 15 years worth of NATO evolution have left intact its underlying concept. NATO is using modern defense trends, such as fighting terrorism, or joint peacekeeping and stabilizing operations, as specific projects aimed at preserving the coalition for the sake of its mission - restraining Russia.

Admittedly, NATO and Russia do have certain common interests. These include fighting international terrorism, stabilizing Afghanistan, and mutual trust measures, also under the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE), de facto disabled but not officially terminated, the analyst writes. However, these cooperative projects should not be overestimated.

About the current terrorism problem, Russia is primarily threatened by Islamic extremists in the North Caucasus, while the United States and NATO are much more concerned with stabilizing Afghanistan - at least more than Russia is, as Afghanistan is on the margin of Russia's political interests. It is also questionable whether Russia would benefit from NATO's complete victory in Afghanistan.

The CFE Treaty has in fact collapsed, as Western nations wish to have as much freedom as they want with regard to conventional weapons, while at the same time restricting Russia as much as possible. This position was bound to destabilize the treaty, Pukhov concludes.

Gazeta.ru, Vremya Novostei

Deputy suggests police reform

Andrei Makarov, a member of the United Russia general council and State Duma deputy, has called for abolishing the Interior Ministry. So far, only civil rights activists and the opposition have discussed this idea, with top leaders and the parliamentary majority avoiding criticism of the ministry and the law enforcement system in general, and responding cautiously to high-profile scandals in this area.

"The ministry cannot be modernized or reformed, it can only be abolished," Makarov said on Wednesday. His words came as another scandal erupted, involving law enforcement officers.

The day before, three police officers beat a 20-year-old Abkhazian to death. Since early November, law enforcement officers have been addressing the president and the prime minister via the Internet regarding crimes committed by their colleagues.

Party colleagues were quick to disown the radical idea. "The statement by United Russia member Makarov is his personal opinion and does not reflect the party's thinking," said Andrei Pisarev, head of the political department of the party's central executive committee.

Valery Ryazansky, deputy head of United Russia, said "the party has not debated this issue."

"The madness gathers speed," complained Vladimir Vasilyev, head of the Duma security committee and former deputy interior minister.

According to Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, any reform of the Interior Ministry must be only part of a long overdue review of the entire system of Russia's law enforcement agencies. "It only appears that this ministry is the most corrupt structure in violating citizens' rights more than others," he said. "This is because it is the most visible to ordinary citizens. Banking watchdogs or, for example, the mechanism of personnel appointments in, say, the judiciary are even more rotten."

An Interior Ministry reform is badly needed, but it is no more likely today than it was five or seven years ago, believes Andrei Soldatov, chief editor of the Agentura-ru portal. "There appears to be a group within the current power structure that is taking advantage of the personnel shifts expected from President Medvedev," the analyst said. "But a real reform of the ministry, which we inherited from the Soviet Union with some cosmetic patches, is only possible with a hard-nosed struggle for power."

Vedomosti, Vremya Novostei

Russia's Central Bank to lower dependence on U.S. dollar

Russia's Central Bank will invest part of its foreign reserves in Canadian dollars to raise the reserves' profitability and lower the risks due to the ongoing fall of the U.S. dollar, which currently accounts for 47% of Russia's foreign currency reserves.

Investors closely monitor statements by the Russian financial authorities because Russia has the world's third largest international reserves, $441.7 billion as of November 13. In 2003, the euro grew 1% against the dollar after Alexei Ulyukayev, then deputy foreign minister of Russia, said they would cut the share of dollars in the country's reserves and buy more euros.

Russia's foreign currency reserves include dollars (47%), euros (41%), the British pound (10%) and the Japanese yen (2%).

"The Central Bank is concerned with maintaining the country's gold and foreign currency reserves, and so its intention to diversify by lowering the country's dependence on the currency of the country where the global crisis began is logical," said Maxim Osadchy, chief analyst at the Corporate Finance Bank.

"However, options are limited because the British pound and the Japanese yen are already represented in the Central Bank's reserves, the Chinese yuan is not a freely convertible currency, and the Brazilian real and the Indian rupee are soft currencies (with widely fluctuating rates and inadequate surety)," the analyst said. "Of course, Canada depends too much on the U.S. economy for geographical reasons, but the Canadian dollar is nevertheless sufficiently independent of the U.S. dollar."

Dmitry Ananyev, co-owner of Promsvyazbank and chairman of the financial markets and money circulation committee at the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's parliament, said the Central Bank is trying to raise the security and profitability of its international reserves.

"The Canadian and Australian dollars are the currencies of industrialized countries with strong commodities sectors," he said. "Due to the strength of their economies and a smaller budget deficit compared to the United States, they are less prone to devaluation. Initially, the share of the Canadian dollar [in the Central Bank's reserves] will not exceed 5%."

David Fuller, the producer of Fullermoney, one of the world's most highly regarded research services covering global strategy and investment trends, said the Canadian economy is strong and self-sufficient. The Canadian dollar is kept up by the bullish trend on the commodities markets, he said.

Canada has many oil and mining companies, including the world's gold leader Barrick Gold. The price of gold on Wednesday soared to another high, $1,185.70 per troy ounce.

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