Monday, September 1, 2008

Window on Eurasia: Moscow to Help Iran Complete Bushehr Atomic Plant

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 1 – Another piece of fallout from the rise in tensions between Moscow and the West over Russia’s invasion of Georgia is Moscow’s announcement that it will help Iran complete the construction of the nuclear plant in Bushehr, a project that had been delayed by U.S. objections that Tehran would use that facility to build a nuclear weapon.
Last Thursday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Moscow was prepared to do complete construction there whatever the Americans say, a statement both intended to put pressure on Washington to back down over Georgia and highlighting the reality, seldom admitted by the West, that Moscow has been behind the Iranian project for more than a decade.
Two reports in the last 24 hours have heightened concerns in this regard. Yesterday, the London “Telegraph” reported that Washington is “concerned” that Moscow will provide Iran with its S-300 anti-aircraft missile system, a development that would make it vastly more costly for the U.S. or Israel to attack the facility.
Russia’s S-300 system, the paper said, is “one of the most advanced multi-target anti-aircraft systems in the world, with a reported ability to track up to 100 targets simultaneously while engaging up to 12 at the same time. It has a range of about 200 kilometers and can hit targets at altitudes of 27,000 meters.”
And the “Telegraph” quoted Dan Goure, who advises the Pentagon as saying that “if Tehran obtained the S-300, it would be a game-changer in military thinking for tackling Iran,” thus raising the possibility of “Israeli air attacks before [that system is] operational” (www.defence.pk/forums/world-affairs/13905-telegraph-us-fears-russia-sell-s-300-iran.html).
Then today, the “Jerusalem Post” said that officials from Russia’s atomic construction firm, Atomstroyexport, will arrive in Iran tomorrow to “discuss the completion of the 1,000-megawatt power plant” in Bushehr,” a project Moscow has been working on since 1995 (www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1220186492375&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull).
Russia’s ambassador to Iran, the Israeli paper said, has “given assurances” to Tehran that “Bushehr will be supplying nuclear energy by early next year.” But many in Israel, the United States and Europe are concerned that Iran will use the plant less to provide power for its economy than to process uranium for the construction of nuclear weapons.
That is why the United States and Europe have sought both directly and through the IAEA to force Iran to give up its nuclear program, even though both Tehran and Moscow insist that it is for peaceful purposes only. Now, by its announcement, Russia has significantly raised the stakes in this standoff.
But in evaluating these reports, two things need to be kept in mind. On the one hand, Moscow’s actions certainly are clearly designed to pressure the West to back down from sanctions against Russia by reminding everyone of Moscow’s capacity to create problems elsewhere. After all, few Russians would be pleased to see Iran become a nuclear power.
And on the other hand, the two new articles follow reports last week there and in the United States that Israel may launch an airstrike against Bushehr. Consequently, at least some in the Israeli capital and Washington may have an interest in playing up reports of Russian actions to justify just such a strike.

Window on Eurasia: Tbilisi’s Decision to Break with Moscow Leaves Georgians in Russia with Fewer Defenders

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 1 – Tbilisi’s decision to break diplomatic relations with Moscow following the Russian invasion has left ethnic Georgians living in the Russian Federation with fewer defenders, created new complications for Georgians with dual citizenship, and set up new obstacles for Russian citizens who may want to travel to Georgia.
The Georgian government’s action has not led to the closure of its consulate in Moscow – Under diplomatic rules, consulates can continue to function even after a diplomatic break – but it remains unclear which third country embassy will house a Georgian interest section – those of Ukraine and Azerbaijan are most often mentioned (www.izvestia.ru/politic/article3120013/).
After the diplomats of Georgia and Russia who are in the process of returning home, the people most immediately affected by this decision are the estimated half million ethnic Georgians living in the Russian Federation and their families at home who often depend on transfer payments from their relatives working abroad.
Given the rising hostility to Georgians that the Russian media have whipped up over the conflict, many of these people are at risk of being attacked by xenophobic groups like the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) and skinheads and now they face these threats without the protection that embassies can give.
Not surprisingly, given its earlier call during the course of the Russian invasion for Moscow to intern all Georgians living in the Russian Federation, DPNI’s website yesterday celebrated reports that the Russian militia is stepping up its fight against “the Georgian mafia” in Russia (www.dpni.org/articles/lenta_novo/9860/).
But as commentaries in the Moscow media have pointed out, the Georgians in Russia face other problems: First, it is unclear how the Georgian consulate in Moscow will be able to intervene on behalf of Georgians who live far from the Russian capital. Second, it is uncertain how they will be able to send transfer payments home.
And third, given that some of them now have married Russians or have taken Russian citizenship, it is unclear how they will arrange to travel to Georgia, a problem that may be especially acute in the case of Georgians living in the southern portions of the Russian Federation and in border areas there.
That is because Tbilisi has changed the rules for getting a visa, something that affects both Georgians in that category and Russian citizens more generally. In the past, such visitors could obtain a visa at border crossing points by paying a little more than 40 U.S. dollars, but now Russian citizens must obtain one in a third country.
At the very least, that will complicate the lives of those Russian citizens who had wanted to travel to Georgia, and more likely, it will lead to a significant decline in the number doing so, depressing investment in the Georgian economy and making it more difficult for Tbilisi to rebuild after the devastation visited upon that country by Russian forces.
Not surprisingly, Russians and Russian officials are outspokenly angry about all this, but so too are at least some ethnic Georgians in Russia. A Moscow priest whose church houses the parish of the Georgian Orthodox Church there said today that Tbilisi’s decision “will create difficulties” for innocent people (www.blagovest-info.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=3&id=22457).
No one can blame Tbilisi for breaking diplomatic relations with Moscow. That is the normal course of action for a government whose territory has been invaded by the armed forces of another state. But given the interrelationships of these two countries, this move will have serious human consequences, which tragically some in each capital are quite ready to exploit.

Window on Eurasia: Ingush Opposition to Pursue Independence after Police Murder Website Owner

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 1 – The opposition in Ingushetia has tried to work within the Russian political system to replace republic head Murat Zyazikov, but now, following the death of a website owner there yesterday from wounds he suffered while detained by Zyazikov’s militia, it has decided that it has no choice but to consider pursing independence for that republic.
Even though it has become one of the hottest of the Russian Federation’s “hot spots” in recent months, with disappearances and killings an increasing feature of public life, that North Caucasus republic had been notable for its lack of a serious opposition group interested in pursuing independence.
But now over the last few days, one has begun to crystallize. On Saturday, Ingushetiya.ru reported that the unrecognized People’s Parliament of Ingushetiya Mekhk-Kkhel would meet to discuss beginning to collect signatures calling for independence, after which the site was attacked and has been inaccessible (www.caucasustimes.com/article.asp?id=16347).
And on Sunday, after Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of that Internet news portal which Zyazikov has sought to close, died from wounds he received at the hands of the local militia, even the more moderate Ingush opposition leaders have decided to pursue independence, and both the Kremlin and Zyazikov, the Kremlin’s man there, have no one to blame but themselves.
Magomed Khazbiyev, the head of the committee that collected more than 80,000 signatures demanding that Moscow replace Zyazikov, said on Ekho Moskvy yesterday that the killing of Yevloyev had radicalized public opinion and was leading ever more Ingush to demand an investigation and think about independence (newsru.com/russia/31aug2008/haz.html).
“We must ask Europe or America to separate us from Russia. If we don’t fit in here, we do not know what else to do,” he said, adding that those who killed Yevloyev must be brought to justice and that “the genocide of the Ingush people” being conducted by the Kremlin must be stopped.”
He said that the Ingush opposition would call a meeting to decide what to do next, adding that some Ingush living in Europe plan to hold a demonstration in front of the building where European leaders are discussing sanctions against the Russian Federation for its aggression in Georgia.
Khazbiyev and his fellow Ingush opposition figures are clearly reluctant to cross this Rubicon. Indeed, Kavkazcenter.com, a website that supports independence for the entire North Caucasus, reported the reaction of the Ingush opposition to the murder of one of its active leaders almost with scorn (kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2008/08/31/60674.shtml).
In his concluding remarks on Ekho Moskvy, that site said, “the anti-Zyazikov opposition figure could not find anything better to say than to ask the Kremlin again “to finally turn its attention to that lie about the flourishing Ingushetia which Murat Zyazikov has been dishing out to the entire world.”
But however that may be, the death of Yevloyev after he was taken into custody on his return to Ingushetia from Moscow is so transparently the result of official actions and the explanations Zyazikov’s officials have offered are so transparently false that even more Ingush are certain to be radicalized in the coming days.
Yevloyev was in perfect health when he was seized by the militia as he deplaned, something he had warned of only last week, and he was so severely wounded in the head when Zyazikov’s interior ministry officers dropped him off at a hospital that there was no possibility that he could recover.
And the official explanations, which include suggestions that there was a struggle between militia officers and Yevloyev over a gun which went off accidentally, are so patently absurd that there are reports that prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation. But few Ingush expect it to be an honest one (www.echo.msk.ru/news/537600-echo.html).
Instead, it is widely assumed that prosecutors will seek to limit blame to the officers directly involved rather than investigate the possibility, even likelihood that more senior figures including republic Interior Minister Musa Medov and Zyazikov himself were behind what many are already calling “a political murder.”
The Ingush human rights organization Mashr has already carried out its own investigation, and its leaders told the Regnum news agency that if the testimony of witnesses with whom they spoke was true, then there was every real to suspect that Zyazikov and Medov were directly involved (www.regnum.ru/news/fd-south/ingush/1048564.html).
And Mashr’s conclusions have been seconded by Russian-wide human rights organizations like the Moscow Helsinki Group, Memorial, Human Rights Watch, and AGORA, something that should help keep the pressure on officials to do something and to raise the political temperature in Ingushetia (www.sobkorr.ru/news/48BAC3E87106D.html).
This case creates a real problem for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. If they sacrifice Zyazikov who is close to both men, they would certainly calm the situation in Ingushetia but could trigger demonstrations elsewhere among those unhappy with the Moscow appointees who run their republics and regions.
But if they do not, Ingushetia almost certainly explode, creating a vastly more serious security problem for the Russian authorities not only across the North Caucasus but behind what is now Moscow’s new front line in Georgia and the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.