Anti-Russian Propaganda from the Independent


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Russia after the agreement - INDEPENDENT's view:

        Russia is defeated
        Russia is weaker
        Russia's alliance with Yugoslavia is damaged

details follow....

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT (London:June 20)

Hard-up Russia eats humble pie

By Rupert Cornwell in Cologne

One glance at the unsmiling, expressionless features of Igor Sergeyev at
the press conference late on Friday night in Helsinki was enough. The
Kosovo peacekeeping deal achieved after three gruelling days of
negotiation was close to a Russian capitulation - and the country's
defence minister knew it.

How different from a week ago when Moscow, master of diplomatic chess,
executed what looked to be a dazzling knight's gambit, sending 200 men to
lay claim not only to Pristina airport but also to a determining role in
the entire peacekeeping operation ahead. Nato was confounded, the Kosovo
Serbs were delirious. The Russians, it seemed, were preparing to dictate
their own terms.

Quickly, however, reality returned. Within a couple of days the dashing
Russian cohort was having to beg British paratroopers for water. Not for
the first time in the Kosovo crisis, when the crunch came an enfeebled,
isolated, and virtually bankrupt Russia realised that it had little choice
but to side with the West. So it was with the plan, co-authored by the
Russians, that forced Slobodan Milosevic to back down. And so it has been
in Helsinki, where Nato has held firm and achieved more or less what it
wanted.

The timing, of course, was no accident. Hours before the deal was struck
in Finland, the Group of Seven richest countries had begun their annual
summit, with Russia's financial plight high on their agenda. Without new
loans to help repay some $17.5bn of foreign debt due later this year, the
country would be forced into humiliating default. "Our debts must be paid,
and they will be paid," said Sergei Stepashin, the Russian Prime Minister,
on arriving here to turn the G-7 into the G-8. But how? For all the
goodwill generated by the deal in Finland, Mr Stepashin would be unwise to
expect any direct assistance here. "There is no linkage," Tony Blair and
other Nato leaders insist, and so it will probably prove. True, the summit
has almost finalised a document outlining a "Partnership for the
Prosperity of Russia". But for all the lofty talk about anchoring Russia
in the Western system, the Partnership at first will offer just working
groups, not billion-dollar infusions of cash.

Nor will it be very different even when Boris Yeltsin, whose personal
intervention on Friday produced the concessions that led to the
peacekeeping deal, pays a brief visit to the summit today. Had there not
been an agreement, the sickly Russian President probably would not have
come at all; as it is, the best he can hope is that the G-7 will lean on
the International Monetary Fund for a vital $4.5bn loan, despite last
week's failure by the Duma to pass a revenue-raising package on which it
was supposedly conditional.

The alliance on the other hand has much to celebrate. If the agreement
holds, it will have tied Russia into the Kosovo military arrangements on
its terms: a unified Nato-led chain of command, no specific Russian sector
(as Mr Yeltsin was demanding almost until the end), and no partition.
Russian troops will operate in the French, US and German sectors, and
maintain access to Pristina airport, which is still occupied by the band
of 200. Though Russian soldiers will be under Russian command, their
activities will be co-ordinated with the national sector commanders who in
turn will report to General Sir Michael Jackson, head of K-For.

Significantly, too, the size of the force has been sharply reduced. Last
week, the talk in Moscow was of sending at least 7,000, perhaps 10,000 or
even 12,000 men to Kosovo. Instead there will be just five battalions, or
3,600 men: far fewer than the 13,000 troops committed by Britain or the
9,000 French or 8,000 German soldiers to be deployed in the province.
Here, too, money was probably the decisive factor. In Kosovo, each country
must pay for the upkeep of its troops. Its military budget in shreds,
Russia simply could not afford any more.


SUNDAY INDEPENDENT (London:June 20)

How a career setback sparked the general's charge to Pristina

By Phil Reeves in Moscow

AFTER a tense week of negotiations, Russia has climbed down and settled
its differences with Nato over its peacekeeping forces in Kosovo. But what
of the man who started it, the Russian general who stunned the world and
exasperated Nato's top brass by seizing an air base in Pristina and
winning the scramble into Kosovo?

The manoeuvre created a diplomatic crisis finally settled late on Friday
night in Helsinki after three days of haggling between the Americans and
the Russians. But, according to sources, personal issues were also at
stake; they say that General Viktor Zavarzin had a particular score to
settle with Nato.

Before the alliance's air strikes began nearly three months ago, the
general was expecting to be promoted on Victory Day - 9 May - when
Russians celebrate the defeat of Hitler. He had put in 17 months as
Russia's first senior military officer assigned to Nato in Brussels, a
post born of the Founding Act signed between Moscow and the expanding
alliance in 1997. Sources say his promotion was already approved.

Nato's bombing spoiled it. His masters in Moscow were angry that he had
not supplied them with details from his Nato contacts about precisely when
the air war - which was universally expected - would begin. His promotion
was put on ice and, after being recalled to Russia with the freeze of
Russia's relations with Nato, he was suspended for a week.

"Moscow wanted to sack him," said Viktor Baranets, a former senior aide to
Igor Rodionov, Russia's previous defence minister. "It was a hard blow for
him as an officer. So he has personal scores to settle with those who
damaged his career."

The chance finally came last weekend when a band of some 200 Russian
paratroopers raced into Kosovo under cover of darkness, at speeds of up to
70mph, observing radio silence to avoid alerting Nato. The stunt cast a
pall over Russia's relations with the West, but the general became an
overnight celebrity.

Reports in Moscow say General Zavarzin, 50, was a moving force behind the
plan. The intention was to force Nato to pay more heed to Russia's demands
for a prominent role in the Kosovo peacekeeping operation; after playing a
critical part in the peace deal, Moscow believed Nato was elbowing it
aside.

The respected Kommersant newspaper has identified the general as the
mastermind, saying he relayed his idea from Bosnia - where he had suddenly
appeared - to the Chief of the General Staff in Moscow, General Anatoly
Kvashnin. The latter presented it to Mr Yeltsin for approval only
half-an-hour before the operation began. The result was the pinnacle of an
otherwise obscure combat commander's career. After a background in the
mechanised infantry, General Zavarzin was appointed in 1994 to command
25,000 peacekeeping troops from the Commonwealth of Independent States in
the turbulent republic of Tajikistan.

He was an unusual choice for the Nato job; the Russians jokingly call the
military top brass, who glide to power without ever seeing action,
"parquet generals", after the wooden floors in their ministry offices. The
bluff and chubby General Zavarzin is the opposite.

His command of English is weak; he had limited experience of diplomacy,
although he attended the Kosovo peace talks alongside Russia's envoy
Viktor Chernomyrdin. Nor does he have the looks or manner of a high-flying
sophisticate. Mr Baranets said: "Zavarzin looks like a slogger, a
trench-digger, but he is brilliantly educated - a real Russian general."

When the general arrived in Brussels, he startled Russian-speaking western
officials by immediately addressing them as "ty" - the familiar
second-person singular which is considered rude in conversation with
strangers.

"I think he was a fairly crude figure," said one western source in
Brussels, "a rough diamond who has spent much of his time peacekeeping in
hot-spots in the former Soviet Union. Which means his definition of
peacekeeping is rather different from ours."

The general and his delegation quickly gained a reputation for not playing
by Nato's rules. While others built friendships and contacts over lunch or
games of tennis, the Russians remained apart.

Instead of working in Nato's headquarters, they based themselves in the
Russian embassy, maintaining only temporary offices at the alliance
buildings. When the air strikes began on 24 March, the general was
recalled from Brussels. He is unlikely to be welcomed back, even though
the peacekeeping issue is now resolved, because Moscow abandoned its
demand for its own sector.

By stealing a march into Kosovo, he wrecked Nato's hour of triumph, and
disrupted the first stages of the entire ground operation. But, back home,
he was the toast of the hour.

The Russian military was delighted and there were tributes in the media.
"We had never heard of him before, but now he has got a very big
reputation," one senior Russian army officer said.

Boris Yeltsin - a consummate opportunist - was quick to join the applause
after Pristina, and swiftly slapped a third star on the
Lieutenant-General's broad shoulders by promoting him to Colonel-General.
Thus, while his hour of glory may not have lasted long, the general's
grudge was settled: at least he got his promotion in the end.


INDEPENDENT (London) June 21

The G8 Summit - West welcomes Yeltsin back into fold

By Rupert Cornwell in Cologne

Boris Yeltsin was talking to Tony Blair just before the start of
yesterday's final G8 session, when Jacques Chirac and Bill Clinton came
over to join the conversation. The Russian President looked around for an
instant and then declared: "I am among my friends now."

The episode, as related by a senior British official, captures perfectly
the central achievement of this weekend's summit: after the acute strains
of the Kosovo crisis, relations between Moscow and the West are back on
track.

Mr Yeltsin's arrival at yesterday's meeting of the G8 (the world's seven
leading industrial powers and Russia) had been awaited with much
trepidation. Would he come? Would he be in a fit condition to take part?
Would he create a scene?

>From the moment he stepped off the Ilyushin jet at Cologne airport, the
answer was clear. "We must all make up with each other after our fight,"
he said to waiting journalists, his step stiff, unsteady and slow, yet
ebullient none the less.

The mood was evident in the vast bearhug which Mr Yeltsin gave his host,
the German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, and in his keenly awaited
bilateral session with President Clinton after the G8 meeting.

If history takes its intended course, Cologne will go down as one of the
group's most productive summits since they began in 1975. Mr Blair said a
"bridge of understanding" had set Russia back on the path of integration
with the international community.

On the economic front, in an unacknowledged reward for Russia's reluctant
agreement over Kosovo, the G8 said it would push for an agreement between
Moscow and the International Monetary Fund on the promised $4.5bn (#2.8m)
IMF loan needed to stave off a massive loan default later this year.

A deal with the IMF would clear the way for a debt rescheduling pact with
the "Paris Club" of wealthy nations led by G8 members Germany, France and
Italy - Moscow's biggest creditors. This could include an effective
write-off of some borrowings inherited from the former Soviet Union,
which, as its successor state, Russia has agreed to honour.

Henceforth, Russia will be more closely involved in the G7 talks from
which it was once virtually barred. The other group members will step up
assistance to emerging small businesses in Russia. There is also an
informal agreement to speed Moscow's entry into the World Trade
Organisation.

But a separate "partnership for the prosperity of Russia" declaration that
the summit heads had planned to issue was scrapped. Apparently, Russia
felt it would implicitly confirm the country's supplicant status in its
dealings with the West.

The new mood may bring a revival of the stalled arms negotiations between
the United States and the former superpower. In his bilateral meeting with
Mr Clinton, the Russian President promised to do his best to persuade the
Duma to ratify the Start-II nuclear arms reduction pact, which will limit
each country's nuclear warheads to 3,000. He also promised to press for
the resumption of negotiations on a Start-III treaty, which would further
reduce the number of warheads, and on the amended Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty which the US is seeking.

Finally, Moscow is normalising its relations with Nato, broken off when
the bombing of Yugoslavia began on 24 March.

The question now is whether the good intentions will survive the realities
of politics in Moscow. The largest party in the Duma is the anti-Western
Communist party, and the anti-Nato military establishment must swallow
Friday night's de facto surrender to the limits imposed by Nato on
Russia's peace-keeping role in Kosovo. If there is no doubting Mr
Yeltsin's belief that Russia's future lies in collaboration with the West,
there are grave doubts about his health and his control of the military.

But in Cologne the optimism was almost universal. "I was struck by the
smiles of everyone today," President Jacques Chirac of France said. "They
were smiles of relief [at the Kosovo settlement], but also smiles of
satisfaction. This was a victory for everyone, a victory for the allies,
but also a victory for Russia over herself."

Russia and the West, he said, were "on the ground together, sharing the
same vision, and the same objectives".


INDEPENDENT (London) June 21

Russia agrees to leave Milosevic high and dry

By Imre Karacs and Rupert Cornwell in Cologne

After 11 weeks during which the Kosovo war strained relations almost to
breaking point, Russia and the West yesterday put their differences behind
them.

President Milosevic today stands isolated once again following agreement
at the Cologne summit of the world's major powers that only a democratic,
post-Milosevic Yugoslavia should qualify for aid.

In a concession to the Russian President Boris Yeltsin the final
communique of the summit did not explicitly make reconstruction assistance
conditional on the removal of Mr Milosevic; but the pledge of "vigorous
measures" to stabilise the Balkans carried the clear implication that
stability could not be achieved while he remained in power.

The United States President Bill Clinton and Mr Yeltsin, who met for one
hour in the Renaissance Hotel, agreed to resume working on arms control
and a host of other issues put on hold during Nato's 11-week bombardment
of Yugoslavia. Nato officially ended the campaign last night.

"It was a meeting of renewal," the US National Security Adviser Sandy
Berger said after the talks, the 17th meeting between the two presidents.

"They agreed essentially that our two countries have gone through a
difficult period through the Kosovo war that put substantial strains on
our relationship, but it was now time to turn to the future, to put that
behind us."

For the first time Russia is explicitly backing the international criminal
tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which has indicted President Milosevic
for war crimes. Simultaneously major steps were taken towards a return to
normality in the war-ravaged province, including the start of an organised
return of the Kosovo refugees and - most important of all - an imminent
deal for the demilitarisation of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

The British Prime Minister Tony Blair said an agreement was expected to be
signed late last night in Tirana between KLA leaders and the British
General John Reith, compelling the guerrillas to hand over all weapons and
to discard their uniforms within 90 days. "This is a great achievement on
anyone's terms," he said.

Mr Berger said Mr Yeltsin made a "very interesting" goodwill gesture by
giving Mr Clinton a thick file of declassified Russian documents about the
assassination of President Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's accused
killer, had lived in the former Soviet Union and married a Russian woman.

US officials said they found the ailing Russian leader robust, pounding
his fist to emphasise points and producing witticisms. At one point, Mr
Berger said Mr Yeltsin joked to Mr Clinton: "If we let the experts do
this, we'll never get a done deal."

The agreement with Moscow capped an unusually productive three days for
the leaders of the seven richest industrial countries - the US, Britain,
Germany, Japan, France, Italy and Canada - and Russia, which have already
seen a far-reaching accord to reduce the debt burden on the world's
poorest countries and steps to flesh out a "Stability Pact" for the
long-term development of the Balkans, and tighten the region's links with
both Nato and the European Union.

A first donors' conference on emergency relief will be held in July,
followed by another meeting in the autumn to assess the scale of help
needed - anywhere from $20bn (#12.6bn) to $100bn according to estimates.

Mr Clinton and Mr Yeltsin discussed the parlous state of Russia's economy,
which slid into crisis last August when it devalued the rouble, and its
$100bn Soviet-era debt. The Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told
reporters the United States had agreed that it favoured writing off some
of the debt. But the White House disagreed, saying President Clinton had
promised only to raise the issue with other creditors.

However, Mr Berger said debt-rescheduling might be possible through the
Paris Club of government creditors, once Russia reached an agreement with
the International Monetary Fund.

The summit did not agree who will be the UN's high representative for
Kosovo, overseeing the civilian rebuilding. Mr Blair is backing the
outgoing Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, saying he would be an
"excellent" candidate. The Italians want the EU Commissioner Emma Bonino.

via MichaelP <papadop@peak.org>

 
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