What the Russian papers say

Pakistan dragging Russia away from Afghan settlement - expert/ Belarus finds alternative oil supplier - Venezuela/ President Medvedev demands instructions be fulfilled/ Russian Paralympic athletes win 15 medals in three days

Pakistan dragging Russia away from Afghan settlement - expert/ Belarus finds alternative oil supplier - Venezuela/ President Medvedev demands instructions be fulfilled/ Russian Paralympic athletes win 15 medals in three days

Nezavisimaya Gazeta

Pakistan dragging Russia away from Afghan settlement - expert

The United States is looking for ways to end the Afghan deadlock. U.S. President Barack Obama has given his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai the go-ahead to negotiate with the enemy. A UN mission is prepared to make contact with the militants. But Afghanistan experts see little chance of a compromise.

A UN diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters that the UN mission's remit means that all the 15-member Security Council had to do was give the nod for secret talks to begin. But will this maneuver work?

Viktor Korgun, Afghanistan sector head at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Eastern Studies, said that chances of negotiation with the Taliban being successful were slim. There would be some progress and marking time, he said. But no serious decisions could be expected.

Each warring side is unwilling to make concessions. Karzai has no agenda for talks, even though he invited Mullah Omar to them. The government demands that the militants recognize the Afghan constitution, which proclaims human rights, equality for women and other democratic values. The Taliban respond by saying that the constitution is a copy of America's and is something alien to Afghans. In addition to everything else, there is no unity in government and there are parties in parliament prepared to meet the Taliban more than halfway.

The Taliban published their constitution in 2006. The document contains some rights for women, but remains backward in substance, aiming to revive customs and practices of Sharia law which existed in the Middle Ages. Mullah Omar, for one, demands that Kabul recognize his constitution and says that he will not start talks until foreign troops pull out.

Now Pakistan is intervening in the peace process, backed by U.S. support. It wants to edge Russia and India away from the settlement and achieve the formation of a coalition government including the Afghan Taliban, who Pakistani intelligence had eating out of the palm of their hand. All this is making the prospects for settlement very dim, Korgun concluded.

Kommersant, Vremya Novostei, Vedomosti

Belarus finds alternative oil supplier - Venezuela

A day before Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was due to visit Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko unexpectedly left for Venezuela. It appears that while in the Latin American country, Lukashenko asked President Hugo Chavez to secure Belarus against Moscow, which Chavez gladly did: Venezuela agreed to supply 80,000 bpd of crude to Belarus. Belarus is threatening to use it instead of Russian oil to keep its refineries running.

Analysts say that Lukashenko's attempt to boost Belarus's position in the oil talks with Moscow is bound to lead to more conflicts.

This is the first time that Lukashenko has left the country during a visit by Putin: the Russia prime minister never failed to meet with the Belarusian leader during his prior visits in May and October 2008 and in May 2009. Russian officials claim not to see any ill will behind the move. Analysts, however, see Lukashenko's spontaneous departure for Venezuela as a deliberate demarche.

Yaroslav Romanchuk, head of the Minsk-based Mizes Research Center, said: "Lukashenko's trips are never spontaneous, and this one has certainly been planned. His visit to Venezuela fits into his stand-off with Russia and his personal conflict with Putin. By leaving for Caracas he is showing Moscow that Belarus could do without it, and that he is too high up to stay just to meet a prime minister."

"We reached agreement on Venezuelan oil supplies easily," Lukashenko said triumphantly after his talks with Chavez.

"Lukashenko is trying to show that he now has an independent source of oil to feed Belarusian refineries replacing the Russian crude, now that its price has gone up," Romanchuk commented.

Yury Shevtsov, a Belarusian political analyst, estimates that 80,000 bpd works out at 4 million metric tons of oil a year, which is close to the volume of duty-free oil that has caused the dispute between Russia and Belarus.

Some analysts do not believe Venezuelan oil could effectively replace Russian supplies to Belarus. "This is no more than a public demarche. Shipping oil from Venezuela to Belarus is absurd in terms of logistics," Mikhail Krutikhin, partner and analyst with the independent Moscow-based RusEnergy consultancy, told Kommersant.

"This is a matter of independence, or of diversifying supplies - anything but economic efficiency," Vladimir Feigin, director of Moscow's Institute of Energy and Finance, told Vremya Novostei.

"Until crude oil becomes airborne, there will be no alternative to Russian supplies for Belarusian refineries," Romanchuk agreed. "Lukashenko's trip was meant to show that he was not going to sit down with Putin and negotiate. But Moscow's negotiation position is stronger and can grow even tougher now: either Belarus gives up its refineries or agrees to buy Russian oil at international prices," he added.

Vedomosti, Gazeta.ru, Kommersant

President Medvedev demands instructions be fulfilled

President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday demanded that the government implement his instructions on time or face dismissals. Analysts have pointed to a spike in Medvedev's activity in the middle of his presidential term.

On Tuesday, President Medvedev chaired a special videoconference to discuss fulfillment of his instructions. Concerned by this failure to fulfill the president's instructions in full and on time, the Kremlin has in fact started acting like "a shadow government."

Unlike the orders issued by then President Vladimir Putin in 2000-2008, Medvedev mostly issues instructions to take a specific decision rather than to discuss a problem. He demonstrated this on Tuesday when he told the Economics Ministry that his instruction on purchases by state corporations and monopolies was highly specific.

This is the first time the president has publicly focused his attention on this issue, a Kremlin official said. Before, the control department would report to him on the fulfillment of his instructions once a year, and these reports were seldom published.

"The president has likely done this to demonstrate who the boss is," said Igor Yurgens, director of the Institute of Contemporary Development supervised by the president. "It began several months ago when Medvedev publicly called to account [ministers] Kudrin and Basargin."

Failure to fulfill the president's instructions has become routine and "looks like sabotage, especially in regard to large-scale modernization tasks facing the country," the analyst said.

Medvedev's activity could be explained by the fact that he is halfway through his term, and he now needs to demonstrate some results, political analyst Dmitry Badovsky said.

In his opinion, the president, who wants officials to respond to people's requests more actively, has resorted to the best method of ensuring this in Russia, a public whipping.

Moskovsky Komsomolets

Russian Paralympic athletes win 15 medals in three days

Russia's Paralympic athletes have won 15 medals, including six gold medals, in three days. During the preceding Olympic Games, the Russian team won only three gold medals. So what is the Russian Paralympians' secret?

Their success cannot be explained by conditions in Russia, where they face a great number of difficulties in life, pensions are tiny, and the public attitude is humiliating. Russian Paralympians use the same sports facilities as all other athletes but get less funding for training and smaller monetary awards for victories.

Anton Sikharulidze, chairman of the parliamentary committee on physical fitness and sports, explains the Paralympians victories by their courage.

But other countries' Paralympic athletes are also courageous people. To qualify for participation in an Olympic-class international competition, all athletes, whether they be able bodied, born with disabilities or people who became disabled in an accident, need special courage.

However, Russia has an advantage over Western countries when it comes to accidents, because Norwegians, for example, have less chance of being hit by an official car disregarding traffic rules or by a car with a drunken driver. In Russia, a huge number of people are injured in accidents because of the general disregard for safety regulations. Consequently, there are many more people in Russia who can take up Paralympic sports.

This is nothing to be happy about, but Russian coaches have a great many people with disabilities to choose from.

Another reason for our Paralympians' success is that the government does not pay as much attention to them as to the Olympic team. And when there is less money, sports officials and managers are not so eager to fight for a piece of the cake.

The conclusion is that the fewer officials try to manage sports, the better the sports results, as evidenced by the victories of our Paralympic team in Vancouver.

RIA Novosti is not responsible for the content of outside sources.

MOSCOW, March 17 (RIA Novosti)