MOSCOW, September 5 (RIA Novosti)
Kommersant
Moscow expands its influence in Kyrgyzstan - paper
Moscow's concerns that Kyrgyzstan may revise its pro-Russian position in favor of a closer relationship with the West has forced Russia to draft a special action plan to preserve the current status quo and consolidate Russian influence in Kyrgyzstan, a leading business daily reports Monday.
Kommersant writes that the Russian leadership is alarmed with the pro-U.S. views of some high-ranking Kyrgyz politicians, particularly Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Daniyar Usenov and Foreign Minister Roza.
However, Defense Minister Ismail Isakov is the main source of Moscow concerns. The Kremlin is said to believe that he has hindered the operation of Russia's Kant air base and bilateral military-technical cooperation.
The Kremlin administration and the Russian government recently worked out a joint comprehensive action plan for bolstering Russian influence in Kyrgyzstan for 2005-2007. In particular, Russian corporations will gradually buy up the Kyrgyz fuel and energy sector, with Gazprom gaining the right to prospect for new natural gas deposits and develop them. Russia's gas monopoly will also overhaul existing gas-transport networks and build new ones.
In addition, Russia's electricity giant, Unified Energy Systems of Russia, will build two hydroelectric power plants. The corporation may join forces with Russian Aluminum on this project, as the metals corporations wants to build a major aluminum factory in Kyrgyzstan, which will require a huge amount of power.
Apart from economic expansion, Russia plans to enlarge and strengthen the Kant air base, finance the modernization of the Kyrgyz air-defense system, provide Bishkek with weaponry at reduced prices and finance Russian-language programs and the opening of a Slavic university.
In exchange, Moscow is ready to write off 50% of Kyrgyz debts (about $187 million), and admit Kyrgyz workers into the country and hire them using simplified procedures. According to official statistics, Russia now has more than 300,000 Kyrgyz workers.
Vedomosti
Beslan mothers tell Putin truth about terrorist attack
The relatives of victims of the last September's hostage-taking crisis in the North Caucasus town of Beslan were the first to open President Vladimir Putin's eyes to a few details of the tragedy, a respected business daily reports.
Vedomosti writes that the news came as something of a shock to the president. He admitted that he did not know the whole truth about the tragedy, said Susanna Dudiyeva, the head of the Mothers of Beslan Committee.
"The president will act on the news that he was misinformed," an official of the Kremlin administration said. "The question is who reported what to the president."
However, Putin only decided to send senior prosecutors to Beslan and did not hurry to fire anyone, saying it might harm security structures.
"We asked him to find the culprits, but the president replied wisely that if he started a purge in the security structures without finding out the facts, it would be a direct step toward destroying the whole system," said Taimuraz Mamsurov, the president of the republic of North Ossetia, who also attended the meeting.
The only practical move that Putin ventured at a Saturday session of the Security Council in response to the Beslan mothers' appeals was to order prosecutors from the central Prosecutor General's Office to go to Beslan to re-check available information on the terrorist attack. A former member of the Office said it was not an extraordinary measure: "Prosecutors from the central staff are normally sent to help investigations that are unable to make decisions on new information."
"We will see what they will do," Ella Kesayeva, a Beslan mother, said. "But there is little hope when the president does not know basic facts [about the terrorist attack]."
Andrei Ryabov of the Carnegie Moscow Center said that unless the investigation changed its tactics, no meetings with the president would pacify the relatives. "That meeting was only an intermediary stage," the expert told Vedomosti. "The main part will be the serious investigation that the president has promised."
The Beslan hostage tragedy claimed the lives of 331 people, including 186 children last September. Terrorists held parents, pupils and staff hostage for three days in a local school before troops stormed the building. In all, 918 people were rescued.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Gazprom steers clear of Ukraine
Ukraine will not be a perennial transit country for Russian gas supplies to Europe, as Gazprom, Russia's natural gas monopoly, is trying to hedge its bets by breaking into new markets, a popular Russian daily reports Monday.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes that Gazprom's first liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker arrived in the United States on September 2. On the same day, Belarus announced it reached an agreement with Russia to keep the price of natural gas bought in Russia at $46.68 per thousand cubic meters and not to change transit prices via Belarus.
However, concurrent talks in Kiev ended in failure. Gazprom and Ukraine's national oil company, Neftegaz Ukrainy, tried but failed to coordinate prices and volumes of Russian natural gas deliveries in 2006.
According to the paper, Ukraine is currently the principal transit country for Russian natural gas to Europe: last year it pumped over 130 billion cubic meters (including 115 bcm to Europe), whereas Belarus handled only 37.5 bcm. With these aces in its hands, Ukraine can afford to all but blackmail Russia.
The paper said that with such an unreliable partner as Ukraine, Gazprom was seeking to diversify its risks, including tapping into new markets. The concern has organized direct supplies of Russian LNG on long-term contracts to the United States.
Belarus may become an equally important partner for Gazprom in the longer term, as the Yamal-Europe natural gas pipeline runs through its territory, the paper added.
In 2010, the North European Gas Pipeline, which Russia and Germany are to lay along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, thereby bypassing the transit countries, should be completed. The throughput capacity of Yamal-Europe will perhaps be increased by that time by adding a second line, and southern Europe may get gas via Turkey through the Blue Stream pipeline.
The new projects will enable Gazprom to reduce "country risks" appreciably and, in emergency situations, send gas deliveries around "the unfriendly nation," the paper said.
Biznes
Cigarette exports from Russia under threat
Major tobacco multinationals may soon stop exporting from Russia, a business daily reports Monday.
Biznes writes that the excise stamps of other countries must now be declared as securities when crossing the border and, according to tobacco producers, a license is needed for them to find their way into Russia, which may take months to obtain.
The paper reported that theoretically the restriction imposed by a government decision, which comes into effect on September 11, applies to all Russian excisable exports, but it will really only concern tobacco producers. In this industry alone, the excise stamps of other countries are pasted on directly at factories, and the stamps themselves are brought into Russia from an importing country.
Market players are exasperated. Sergei Shelekhov, president of the Grandtabak Tobacco Distributors Association, said: "On the one hand, they [the authorities] talk about liberalization, and the Economic Development and Trade Ministry abolishes tobacco licensing. On the other, they introduce restrictions, which add neither to quality nor to the budget. All this is only complicating things."
Sergei Filippov, deputy director general of the Tabakprom Tobacco Producers Association, also said it was wrong to list excise stamps as securities. "Stamps are not traded in Russia, they are just put on cigarette packages and sent back."
Several major companies have simultaneously said they are considering moving the production of exported cigarette brands to other countries. Vadim Botsan-Kharchenko, corporate director of Japan Tobacco Int., said that practically every major cigarette exporter had operations in Commonwealth of Independent State countries and might move their business there.
Vladimir Aksyonov, corporate director of British American Tobacco Rossiya, said it was already the second problem affecting cigarette exports from Russia. "We are constantly having problems with VAT rebates, even after court rulings," he told Biznes.
Izvestia
Most Russians want Putin to be next president -- survey
A respected newspaper reports Monday that 60% of Russians wanted Vladimir Putin to remain as Russia's president after the 2008 election.
According to the Izvestia daily, experts said the results of a survey conducted by the ROMIR Monitoring research holding were the consequence of a profound crisis in relations between the authorities and society.
The paper wrote that people were unhappy with their lives and blamed the authorities. But ROMIR researcher Nikolai Popov said the worse Russians thought of them, the more they wanted to believe that there was still someone "good" at the top. This "good guy" is the president.
According to Popov, a total lack of politicians on the current political scene that people would trust more than the current head of state may lead to a situation where "the people will do everything to keep Putin in power and some of the Putin team will eagerly meet these wishes halfway."
However, there is no agreement in society on how to enable the president to stay in power for another term after 2008. In all, 28% of those polled proposed that the Russian Constitution be amended and the article prohibiting someone from being president for more than two consecutive terms be abolished.
Another 10% of the respondents suggested a constitutional amendment to make the prime minister head of state and appoint Putin to this office. A further 10% said they were hoping for the establishment of a Union State with Belarus to be headed by the Russian leader. It did not matter for 12% of the respondents how Putin was kept in power - the most important thing for them was that he remained the president.
A mere 19% of Russians said they believed the president would really dare to amend the constitution. They said he would either ensure fair elections, without trying to influence their results, or appoint a successor, Izvestia reported.
