MOSCOW, December 29 (RIA Novosti) Pakistani crisis gives Russia opportunity to improve relations with West/ Russian-Iranian play on Western nerves/ Russia must prove vulnerability of Western ABM systems/Generals propose Putin as Hero of Russia/ Foreign auto makers promise Russia nearly $3 billion in investment
Komsomolskaya Pravda
Pakistani crisis gives Russia opportunity to improve relations with West
The current confrontation between Islamists and the secular opposition in Pakistan has brought the country to the brink of civil war. Pakistan could plunge into chaos if parliamentary elections, slotted for January 8, are called off or if large-scale election violations are discovered.
Sergei Markov, director of the Moscow-based Institute of Political Studies, said developments in Pakistan would not affect Russia in the near future. However, the Kremlin could face a multitude of problems if Islamists who hate President Pervez Musharraf take over or otherwise make it into the corridors of power.
He said international politics would change drastically because Islamic leaders in Pakistan, a nuclear power, would be a threat to all countries. Russia could face a surge of radicalism.
Markov said Russia now had an opportunity to improve relations with the West, and that the lack of major threats enabled the United States and the European Union to press ahead with Kosovo's independence, to influence the situation in Georgia and Ukraine and to deploy elements of the missile defense system near Russian borders.
He said Moscow, Washington and Brussels would have common interests if radical Islamists took over in Pakistan.
According to Markov, current developments show that the U.S. policy in Pakistan has failed. Instead of rubbing its hands with joy, Russia should offer advice to its partners and should use its position to maintain regional stability.
Gazeta.ru
Russian-Iranian play on Western nerves
Moscow rather quickly denied Tehran's announcement about the delivery of Russian-made S-300 air defense missile systems, which rang alarm bells in the West.
Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najar said on December 26 that Moscow would supply several dozen S-300 systems to Tehran in 2008. Later sources in the Russian military confirmed the information to the media.
Najar's words sounded quite convincing after what Mikhail Dmitriyev, director of the Russian Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, said at a meeting of the Russian-Indian intergovernmental committee on military-technical cooperation.
Dmitriyev said that Russia would consider all of Tehran's requests for defensive systems that are not prohibited by international agreements.
The S-300 is a medium-range air defense missile system, which went on combat duty in Russia in 1979. Its later modification, the S-300PMU1, which Moscow allegedly planned to supply to Iran, is designed to protect key facilities from all kinds of air attack. It has a range of 150 km (93 miles) and has never been used in combat, but is considered a highly effective air defense system.
In 2005 Russia signed an agreement with Iran on the delivery of the Tor-M1 short-range air defense systems and made the delivery in late January 2007. What Tehran now lacks is a medium-range system.
Vladimir Yevseyev, an expert at the Moscow Carnegie Center and senior research associate at the IMEMO Center for International Security, said Iran would have an efficient air defense system only if it had the S-300, because the short-range Tor is only a powerful weapon in combination with S-300.
Military experts said immediately after Iran's defense minister made the controversial statement that Tehran could be bluffing.
"Iran's statement could be a PR stunt, a foray into the sides' position on the issue," Yevseyev said. He said that talking about the delivery of S-300 systems to Iran made no sense, because Moscow does not have enough systems available for export and Tehran lacks the funds to buy them.
Voenno-Promyshlenny Kuryer
Russia must prove vulnerability of Western ABM systems
Russia's calm reaction to Washington's withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and deployment of anti-missile systems in Alaska created the illusion that the Untied States could continue to make unilateral decisions disregarding the security interests of other states.
Russian experts say that the United States is unable to build up its ABM capability for technical reasons, mainly because of a lack of reliable ABMs.
Although Washington announced it had carried out successful trials of such missiles, this was for political reasons and led the way for building the silos for ABMs in Europe.
The United States' practical goal is to complete the technological cycle: build the silos, load the missiles, monitor their operation and include the objects in the global control system.
After improving the construction technology by building the sites in Poland, the United States will have the technical capability to commission one launch site per year. In this scenario, soon there will not be one launch site with 10 anti-missiles close to the Russian borders, but dozens of them spread across Europe.
This would allow the United States to establish several European elements of the system designed to protect its national territory from missiles launched from any country.
Russia's situation is deteriorating. It must act immediately to prove that it has the potential to restore the strategic balance in Europe. To do this, it should openly demonstrate the vulnerability of the ABM facilities, as China did on January 11 this year when it launched a ground-based medium-range ballistic missile that destroyed its aging Feng Yun-1C weather satellite 535 miles above the earth.
Tests of systems capable of destroying radars and protected launchers must be carried out in a manner proving that the viability of ABM facilities is limited to peacetime and pre-war periods. Such systems supplied to the armed forces should be deployed in areas where they would be most effective.
Komsomolskaya Pravda, Moskovsky Komsomolets
Generals propose Putin as Hero of Russia
A pressure group comprising four generals, namely, Valentin Varennikov, Alexander Yefimov, Vladimir Shamanov and Vladimir Dolgikh, all heroes of Russia and the Soviet Union have proposed awarding the title of Hero of Russia to President Vladimir Putin and awarding him the Order of Service to the Fatherland, First Class.
In their address, the generals said Putin's work in the last eight years was an ultimate heroic achievement, and that the nation must appreciate this. They said Putin had a very good record and criticized his predecessors.
From 1985 till 2000, our presidents had only shamed us by betraying our national interests and by their outrageous behavior; we prayed that they would not embarrass the country once again during their regular foreign visits, the generals said.
Lieutenant General Vladimir Shamanov, 50, who was recently placed in charge of the Russian Armed Forces' Main Directorate for Combat Training and Service, said he had also signed the proposal.
Shamanov said many people could take this for kowtowing, but that they should keep their dirty hands off Russian soldiers and the commander-in-chief.
Under the national state awards statute, a request on awarding any private individual should be sent to local self-government bodies and subsequently examined by regional and federal agencies.
The head of state is supposed to sign the relevant decree and present the award. In effect, the generals would like the president to award himself.
Their initiative could go unnoticed, or Putin's successor would award him instead.
Vedomosti
Foreign auto makers promise Russia nearly $3 billion in investment
The government has completed a campaign to attract foreign car manufacturers to Russia. As a result, Russia has been promised nearly $3 billion in investment. Truck manufacturers need no invitation, they come themselves.
In 2005, German Gref, Russia's former economics minister, estimated foreign investment by companies attracted by Russian tax benefits to be about $2 billion. The actual sum will be far higher: 12 foreign car manufacturers have pledged to invest $2.7 billion and to start producing over 1 million vehicles a year by 2012.
However, auto makers would build plants in Russia even without tax benefits, says A.T. Kearney's auto industry expert Yevgeny Bogdanov. With a plant's output of about 50,000, it is more profitable to assemble cars for the local market in Russia and cut logistics, labor costs and reduce duties - 25% on cars and only 12%-13% on auto parts for car assembly, he said. Industrial production has only brought foreign car manufacturers to Russia earlier, Bogdanov said.
Foreign truck manufacturers have arrived in Russia despite a lack of tax privileges benefits. In the spring of 2007, Volvo Trucks announced that it would invest 100 million euros in a plant in Kaluga (188 km southwest of Moscow), which will assemble 10,000 Volvo and 5,000 Renault trucks a year.
Sweden's Scania has decided to build a plant for the manufacture of heavy goods vehicles with a capacity of 10,000 trucks a year. Light goods vehicles and medium-sized trucks (Isuzu, Yuejin, Iveco, Hyundai Porter, etc.) are also being manufactured. According to the ASM Holding, the production of foreign trucks nearly doubled in January-October 2007, to 13,031.
Localizing production is not profitable for truck producers, says Lars Himmer, deputy director general of Volvo Trucks, because duties on both new trucks and car components are set at an equal rate of 5%; and if a producer starts buying or producing some auto parts in Russia, duty on imports of the other components rises to 6%-7%.
Tax benefits on industrial car assembly projects are only granted to projects producing over 25,000 cars a year, while the truck market is not as big.
Volvo proposes that the Russian government should change the terms for truck manufacture to make localizing production more attractive. Himmer said the company would build the plant anyway, as the market is large and growing.
According to the Russian Automakers Association, the truck market grew by 29% (362,300 vehicles) last year. The ASM Holding's statistics say that Russia produced 248,233 trucks last year, which means that 114,000 good vehicles were imported. A rise in imports is due to the boom in infrastructure and construction projects, says Mikhail Pak, an analyst from the Capital investment company.
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