MOSCOW, March 6 (RIA Novosti) Russia, Europe could join forces to solve "frozen conflicts"/ Journalist dies in suspicious circumstances/ Rosneft doubles reserves at Vankorskoye oil field/ Sberbank shares fall below state support level/ GM to launch budget car for Russia
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Russia, Europe could join forces to solve "frozen conflicts"
The European Union and Russia have common problems, a prominent Russian analyst writes in the popular daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
Their attitude to the Kosovo plan proposed by Martti Ahtisaari, which stipulates substantial independence for the Serbian province, is not as clear-cut as the attitudes of Pristina and Washington, writes Vladislav Inozemtsev, scientific director of the Russian Center for Postindustrial Research.
(Martti Ahtisaari is a former President of Finland (1994-2000) who currently is the UN representative and mediator at the Vienna peace talks on the final status of Serbia's southern province, Kosovo, which has been under UN administration since 1999.)
Russia is in no hurry to use the Kosovo precedent to announce the independence of self-proclaimed post-Soviet states.
Inozemtsev said two enclaves on the Russian southern borders, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, could use the Kosovo precedent to formalize their secession from Georgia. The status of Transdnestr, the breakaway Moldovan republic, and Nagorny Karabakh, the breakaway region in Azerbaijan with a largely Armenian population, has not been determined either.
However, Russia is not prepared to support their claim to independence, because it has no serious interests there and its support to them could trigger conflicts with neighbors.
According to Inozemtsev, the recognition of Kosovo's independence could put in question the legitimacy of Moscow's actions in Chechnya, whose attitude to Moscow was largely similar to relations between Kosovo and Serbia in the early 1990s.
Brussels is still considering its stance on Kosovo, knowing that its recognition could lead to the emergence of an impoverished and failed state bordering the EU. Likewise, the EU does not want its decision to aggravate France's problems with Corsica and Spain's problems with Catalonia, and to provoke a division, even if a peaceful one, of Belgium into Wallonia and Flanders.
In that situation, the analyst writes, it would be more reasonable to find a common principle for solving the problem of all those territories with unclear status in the that fall into the EU and Russia's zone of responsibility, and also to postpone a final solution for 20-30 years.
First, this would be the first instance of a positive political interaction between the EU and Russia, which is crucial for their future relations.
Second, it would create a precedent of solving a European problem within the boundaries of "broader Europe" without the involvement of the United States or the UN, which has a minor interest in it.
And third, Europe would lay claim to a role in the global political game, without which its political identity will remain uncertain for many years.
Kommersant
Journalist dies in suspicious circumstances
Moscow prosecutors yesterday launched an investigation into the death of Ivan Safronov, a military correspondent with Kommersant, who died last Friday in suspicious circumstances. There are reasons to suspect forced suicide. Prior to his death, the retired colonel, 51, was working on an article about Russian weapons supply to the Middle East, which could have caused a great scandal.
Safronov fell out of a fifth floor window in the building where he lived, prosecutors said. Having talked to his relatives, neighbors and colleagues, they concluded that he had no reason to commit suicide.
The newspaper only knew he was working on an article on the international weapons exhibition IDEX 2007, which opened in the United Arab Emirates on February 17. He stated he wanted to try and verify information about the possibility of new weapon supplies to the Middle East. In particular, the sale of Su-30 Flanker fighters to Syria and S-300V air defense systems to Iran. In both cases, weapons were to be delivered via Belarus so that the West could not accuse Moscow of arming the rogue states, according to Safronov's sources. He phoned the newspaper from Abu Dhabi, where top defense industry executives were convened, and said he had the necessary evidence.
Upon return to Moscow, the journalist told his colleagues that he had information that Russia and Syria had already signed other contracts, for the sale of Pantsyr-S1 air defense missile/gun systems, MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters and Iskander-E short-range ballistic missiles. That day he phoned the newspaper and said that he would send an article on weapon supplies to Syria and Iran via Belarus. The article never arrived.
In early 2005 a big scandal broke out after an article was published stating that Russia could leave Iskander missiles in Syria. Safronov contributed to that publication.
He informed colleagues what he had found out, and said that he would not write about it yet because he had been warned that it would lead to an international scandal and then Russian security services could accuse him of divulging state secrets and "push the case till the end of time" (several cases were launched in the past accusing Safronov of divulging state secrets in his publications, but official charges were never brought). The journalist did not specify from whom the warning had come.
Vremya Novostei
Rosneft doubles reserves at Vankorskoye oil field
Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil major, has answered the question as to why it would not allow any other companies to take part in the development of the Vankorskoye oil field in the Krasnoyarsk Territory in East Siberia. Yesterday a company representative said the field held 490 million metric tons of oil, not 270 million, as announced a year ago.
The French major Total was interested in a joint project, but it lost all its court cases with the option for a 52% stake in the field. Rosneft's president, Sergei Bogdanchikov, said last summer that the company would develop Vankorskoye on its own, without any foreign partners. A month ago, he described it "as a group of fields rather than a field, where Rosneft had posted an increase in three years on such a scale that they are talking about the first post-Soviet discovery of an oil and gas producing province."
When Rosneft purchased the field in 2003, it had proved reserves estimated at a mere 40 million metric tons.
The Federal Agency for Subsoil Use has confirmed the increase in the field's reserves and said even that they may increase further next year.
Valery Nesterov, analyst with the Troika Dialog brokerage, said this increase put Vankorskoye in line with such huge Russian fields as Samotlorskoye, Romashkinskoye and Priobskoye. The sulphur content in the oil there is fairly low, he said.
Rosneft has already invested $1.5 bln in the project and is expected to invest the same again before the year end, although initially it planned to allocate only $1 bln, or a third of its entire investment program. However, now it needs to accelerate the project's development, because the oil from this field is destined for the first pipeline currently being built from East Siberia to the Pacific, Bogdanchikov said. Exploration and development of 14 sectors around Vankorskoye may later provide enough oil for the second pipeline as well, bringing the total pumping capacity of the route to 80 million metric tons a year.
Gazeta.ru, Kommersant
Sberbank shares fall below state support level
The plunge on the Russian stock markets is lasting longer than expected. State run savings bank Sberbank has been hit the hardest, because the fall in share prices has put its secondary public offering (SPO) under threat. Many investors believe the state will prop up the shares on the falling market, but there will come a time when it may withdraw its support.
The RTS exchange has fallen to a psychological threshold of 1700 points, and analysts said it could fall a further 10%.
Initially, Sberbank and its supporters had the strength to resist the downward trend, and its securities grew in the first few days of the global stock market tumble. However, they succumbed last Thursday, losing 2.7% Monday; the shares are now trading at 88,000 rubles against the starting SPO price of 89,000.
"State support for Sberbank has been apparent in the last three days, when its shares were trading at above 89,000 rubles," said Nikita Korentsvit, a manager at Solid Management. "Yesterday the market demonstrated its strength versus the [state] support."
Andrei Vernikov, an analyst with Aton-Line web trading company, said: "It means that investors may prefer to buy [Sberbank's] securities cheaply on the market, rather than participate in its SPO."
Russian Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref, who is a member of Sberbank's Supervisory Council, said the latter was unlikely. "The SPO is as good as complete, as investors have made certain financial commitments, and I don't think they would backtrack," he told journalists in Singapore Monday.
Anton Tabakh, senior analyst with the Uralsib financial company, said: "You can jump from a wagon of a moving train, but not without damage to your health." According to him, there is no reason to jump now: "I believe that Sberbank's shares will be supported."
Sberbank officials seem confident. Deputy board chairperson Bella Zlatkis said Monday that buyers were supporting the market. "Brokers joke that one should buy falling securities," she said. "It means that there is a buyer even for the fastest-falling commodity."
Vedomosti
GM to launch budget car for Russia
General Motors is reluctant to lag behind its rivals despite financial difficulties. The U.S. concern has announced it is working on budget car designs for the emerging markets of India, China and Russia.
The world's biggest carmaker already has a plant, GM-AvtoVAZ, in the Russian city of Togliatti on the Volga, and is building another in St. Petersburg, which is expected to produce 25,000 cars a year.
GM realizes that they need to offer budget cars on many markets, such as China, Russia, Brazil, India and Korea, said the company's Russian representative Agnes Rona. A number are planned to be developed by the GM Engineering Center in South Korea, but it is too early to say when and where production will start, she said.
GM is one of the last international carmakers to announce plans to build a budget car for the emerging markets. Renault has been selling the Logan (in Russia prices start at $9,500) which has been selling on the Russian market for two years. Nissan, Toyota and Volkswagen with Skoda plan to launch budget cars here by 2010.
"It isn't surprising that car manufacturers are all planning to develop one budget car after another," said Renault's Olga Sergeyeva. "This is a very attractive segment, after all." Renault has no intention of leaving it at that, she added. It is anticipated that its joint venture with the Moscow City government, Avtoframos, will increase its capacity to 160,000 cars a year and they plan to launch new models in 2009.
If Toyota can successfully afford to develop new models, it is going to be more difficult for GM to do so. Ivan Bonchev, car industry consultant with Ernst & Young, said that it would need at least $2 billion to develop a budget model, and the corporation is currently not doing that well. It posted net losses of $3.049 billion with revenues of $155.46 bln in the first nine months of 2006.
Yelena Sakhnova of Deutsche UFG said that cars with a price tag under $10,000 accounted for 54% of new cars sales on the Russian market. Foreign carmakers were also increasing their market share at the expense of Russian producer AvtoVAZ, which currently controls 35% of the market, she said.
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