Argumenty i Fakty
Putin's Visits To Paris And Kiev: Potential Agenda
This Friday Vladimir Putin will meet in Paris with his French counterpart, Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Spanish Prime Minister Rodriguez Zapatero, the weekly Argumenty i Fakty reports.
Experts say Moscow hopes to continue discussions on European integration, while the western Europeans want to talk about former Soviet republics, including the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia and Moldova. President Putin will also touch upon the problem of ethnic Russians in Latvia and Estonia. An issue of common concern will be Iran: the Europeans are prepared to do everything possible to prevent military strikes against it.
On Saturday, the Russian leader will make a working visit to Kiev. His main task there will be to draw a line under the political subject of Ukraine's recent elections and push dialogue toward routine matters, in particular the transit of Russian oil via Ukraine to the West. Another major issue is the common economic space of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, which Kiev is still considering.
Analysts believe that Ukraine may take a very tough position on the issue of oil transit. Talks on raising the transit fee have been resumed, but this time the Russian authorities may suggest other options. It is clearly unproductive to try to convince Ukraine, which means that Russia may revive the idea of other oil pipelines, in particular the northern one. It would like to connect deposits of the light Siberian oil with Murmansk on the Barents Sea. Another route is from Siberia to Nakhodka on the Pacific coast or to Daqing, China.
China is short of about 70 million metric tons of oil a year and is ready to buy nearly all of Russia's exported oil. Experts say building private pipelines or using state returns from oil sales could solve the problem. This possibility will certainly alarm Europeans and Ukraine.
Kommersant
China Trying To Use Russian Army For Its Own Purposes
Yesterday, Chief of the Russian General Staff Yury Baluyevsky left for China to settle a scandal over the first Russian-Chinese military exercise, Commonwealth-2005, which is due to be held this fall off the Yellow Sea coast, writes Kommersant.
The initial plans were to practice operational teamwork in combating terrorism during the exercise. However, Beijing, skillfully changing the format of the exercise, has tried to re-orient the two countries' armies to practicing an invasion of Taiwan.
The choice of where the exercise will take place became a stumbling block. The Russian military selected the Xinjiang-Uigur autonomous region, basing their choice on the area's problematic nature due to Uigur separatists and its proximity to Central Asia, which has become an arena in the fight against international terrorism. However, Beijing flatly rejected the proposal. Instead, it suggested the Zhejiang province near Taiwan.
A joint exercise in this area would look too provocative and trigger a strong reaction not only from Taiwan but also America and Japan, which recently included the island in the zone of their common strategic interests.
Beijing is trying to use Russia as an additional lever of pressure on the disobedient island to show it that its policy is also causing dissatisfaction in Russia, from which the Taiwanese are expecting assistance in their dialogue with Beijing and bid to join the WTO and the UN.
On the Russian military's insistence, the exercise was shifted north to the Shangdong peninsula. However, the Chinese are trying to change the format of the exercise with proposals to enlarge the contingents with Marines and Pacific Fleet warships. Marine landings to seize the area will be practiced during the "antiterrorist" exercise.
Russia's agreement to hold the exercise will inevitably cause a furor in America, Japan and Taiwan. But a refusal will spoil relations with China, which three months ago courteously agreed to Russia's proposal to hold an exercise.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Federation Council Speaker: Putin An Ideal Premier
In an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Speaker of the Federation Council (the upper chamber of the Russian parliament) Sergei Mironov shared his vision of Vladimir Putin's political future.
He says Putin's current presidential term will not be his last one. In 2012, he will be able to run for a third term. Prior to that, from 2008 to 2012, he will have the opportunity to take up one of the three highest state offices: the prime minister, the chairman of the Federation Council or the chairman of the State Duma.
Mironov believes Putin would make an ideal premier, as he has already held the post. "However, I am against any changes to the state system and am against a parliamentary republic," the speaker said. "A presidential republic is what Russia needs and will need for long decades, if not centuries."
As a professional parliamentarian, Mironov sees the purely theoretical advantages of a parliamentarian republic where a popularly elected parliament has genuine power. However, he believes this is not suitable for today's Russia.
In any case, Mironov believes whoever the next president may be, Putin will still have higher ratings. The Federation Council speaker does not see anything significant in the recent decline of the Russian leader's popularity rating. "These ratings can be artificially inflated or deflated and everyone knows this," he said.
Mironov declined to name Putin's potential successors. However, he said that there were such figures. According to him, they are all part of the president's team and hold different posts (not necessarily senior positions). Nevertheless, all of them are public politicians or the heads of departments, organizations or regions.
Gazeta
Russian Business Prepares To Meet With Putin
Vladimir Putin is resuming regular meetings with businessmen. On March 24, representatives of large, medium and small businesses, as well as banking associations will convene, in the Kremlin. In the past, President Putin only used to invite oligarchs, writes Gazeta.
The head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), Arkady Volsky, says the top managers of various business associations and officials from the presidential administration met in the Kremlin yesterday, where they discussed who would attend the upcoming meeting and the agenda.
The last meeting with RSPP management board in winter 2003 was overshadowed by then Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who talked about corrupt officials and questioned Rosneft's acquisition of Severneft. In response, Putin asked the head of Yukos how his company had managed to acquire extra reserves of oil. "The ball is in your court," Putin concluded his verbal exchange with Khodorkovsky.
Nobody wants a repetition of this. Therefore, the format of the meeting has been changed. Deputy head of the Center for Political Technologies Alexei Makarkin believes if someone starts an argument, his own colleagues will criticize him.
It seems that the Kremlin has given the businessmen a carte blanche to select discussion topics. The only requirement is that the dialogue must be constructive, one of the participants in yesterday's meeting revealed.
Analysts believe that the discussion will focus on tax reform and access to investment capital and loans. In addition, according to the head of the Coordination Council of Business Associations, Alexander Shokhin, the meeting will touch upon the relations between business and the state, including ways to improve the taxation system.
Experts do not expect any surprises at the meeting. The discussion will be as amiable as possible, Makarkin thinks. If there are any problematic aspects, business discusses them with the premier during sessions of the Council on Competitiveness.
Noviye Izvestia
Human Rights Activists Ask President To Protect Jurors
A group of famous human rights activists recently sent a letter to President Putin asking him to protect jurors from pressure exerted by law-enforcement bodies, Noviye Izvestia reports.
The chairman of the Moscow Helsinki Group, Lyudmila Alekseyeva, said jurors had been summoned to the prosecutor's office and required to reveal which verdict they had reached. She added that jurors had also been tailed and instances of eavesdropping had occurred. Therefore, the human rights activists asked the president to take trial by jury under his personal control.
Human rights advocates believe that since trial by jury began on January 1, 2003, jurors have been able to frustrate several high-profile espionage cases, thereby causing trouble for public prosecutors. One example was acquittal of physicist Valentin Danilov, though the prosecutor's office later appealed the jurors' decision in the Supreme Court, and the scientist was convicted.
"Law enforcers are trying to infect jurors with the illnesses of the Russian justice system, corruption, disdain for law and a desire to score points with the executive authorities," Alekseyeva believes.
However, prosecutors' claims to the work of the jury are not always unfounded.
According to Sergei Kovalyov, the head of the Memorial human rights group, sometimes disappointing failures can be identified in the work of jurors themselves, as they do not really know how this emerging institution of justice and civil society functions. However, the expert believes that this problem will be solved with time.
Georgy Zubovsky, the chairman of the Moscow Board of Lawyers, says Russia needs trial by jury. However, he believes people without any knowledge of civil law often become jurors. Apart from that, they are economically dependent and can be equally involved in a criminal conspiracy with the defense or the prosecution.
Trud
Scientists Start Testing Model Of Manned Mars Lander
The manned Mars mission project has entered a new phase, as Russia's Keldysh Research Institute has started tests of the components and equipment of an interplanetary craft. They are now testing a model of the future Martian lander in a wind tunnel.
In an interview with Trud, project coordinator Vitaly Semyonov says six members will probably go on the Mars expedition: the commander, flight engineer, doctor, pilot, and two scientists. The experts' plan is that the 500-ton craft will approach the planet and, at an altitude of 400 kilometers, orbit it. A descent platform will detach from the craft and will land without a parachute at an angle of 52 degrees, which means the planet's surface will be used as much as possible for baking when entering the atmosphere. Brake flaps will open on the craft's right and left. The rocket-shaped platform will enter the Martian atmosphere (which begins at an altitude of 120km) and descend to 30km. Then, rebounding from the atmosphere, it will rise to 60km only to start its descent again. At an altitude of 2km it will switch on its retro-engines. When the distance to the surface is 50 meters, the platform will hover for 50 seconds for the crew to select a landing zone before the craft touches down.
Three cosmonauts, the pilot and scientists, will control the landing. After a month, they will blast off using a rocket mounted on the descent module. Then the crew will dock with the spacecraft. The manned Earth-Mars-Earth mission will last about 730 days.
The 35-ton landing platform will be tested both on the ground and in space, but the scientists have already begun tests of a 1:200 scale model. Experiments are being conducted on a rig in the Keldysh Center, which almost fifty years ago carried out wind tunnel tests on the first satellite, which ushered in the space age in 1957.
