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IRAQ: Russia Remains Unconvinced of U.S. Success
By Sergei Blagov
MOSCOW, Apr 10 (IPS) - As the U.S.-led war on Iraq seems to be wrapping
up, Russia remains unconvinced of the fall of Saddam's regime and still
sounds critical.
The war on Iraq is yet to be over despite events in Baghdad, said
Guennady Seleznyov, speaker of the State Duma, the lower house of the
Russian parliament. He accused the U.S.-led coalition of "waging war
against civilians and journalists," and described the U.S. as an
"aggressor".
The future of Iraq should still be discussed by the UN Security
Council, Seleznyov told journalists in Moscow Thursday.
So far, Russia's top leaders are yet to comment on the fall of
Baghdad. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to come up with
detailed reaction at the forthcoming meeting with the leaders of France
and Germany in St. Petersburg.
French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder are due to be in St. Petersburg on Apr.11-12 to focus on Iraqi
crisis. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was reportedly scheduled to
join, but then called off the trip.
Presumably, if Annan had joined the three main European opponents of
the U.S.-led war, it would have been seen as an affront to the U.S.,
something that the UN can hardly afford these days.
However, Russia has been careful to deny that it was forming an
anti-war and an anti-U.S. coalition. "Any split among European nations
over Iraq would contradict Russia's interests," says Mikhail Margelov,
head of the Federation Council's foreign affairs committee, who has been
one of the mouthpieces for Putin's foreign policy.
"Meanwhile, Russia is interested in a partnership with the U.S. so as
to ensure strategic stability, non-proliferation and to combat
international terrorism," RIA news agency quoted Margelov saying at a
Russian-German conference in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.
Nonetheless, Russian media remain critical. The fall of Baghdad does
not mean the end of war for the U.S., Russian official RIA news agency
said in a commentary Thursday. "Americans seized Baghdad while looters
took all the rest," commented 'Kommersant' daily.
Moreover, exactly when Saddam's statue was demolished in Baghdad on
Wednesday, tens of thousands of people rallied outside the U.S. Embassy
in Moscow. The crowd shouted: "Shame! Shame!"
Rally organizers, the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, said the
demonstration was prompted by an attack on a Russian diplomatic convoy
outside Baghdad.
Organizers estimated the crowd at up to 100,000 people, but media
reports indicated, though the rally was one of the largest in recent
years, numbers were much fewer, around 20,000. Reportedly, students came
after professors cancelled classes and ordered them to attend, while
others were forced to attend by their employers and got the day off
work.
Russia has also accused the U.S. of misleading both domestic and
international opinion by manipulating media reports on the war in Iraq.
"We have all seen the bias in the information provided, the
violations of the rights of journalists and the way they deceive the
American public and the international community as a whole," a spokesman
for the press ministry said in a statement, as quoted by the RIA earlier
this month. The statement did not cite any examples of the alleged U.S.
manipulation.
In the meantime, Moscow was forced to deny reports that it is
sheltering Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in its embassy in Baghdad.
These claims "absolutely do not and cannot correspond with reality,"
Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said Wednesday.
"Any attack against our embassy will be considered a serious
violation of the Vienna convention on diplomatic privilege and
immunity," Yakovenko warned.
The speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, suggested
earlier that Saddam could have found refuge in Russia's Baghdad embassy.
However, on Wednesday RIA quoted Berri's spokesman Arafat Hijazi as
saying that the speaker was "misunderstood."
A convoy carrying the Russian ambassador to Iraq came under fire as
it headed to Syria on Apr.6. Russian ambassador to Iraq Vladimir
Titorenko accused U.S. forces of deliberately shooting at the convoy,
which was also carrying embassy staff members and journalists.
Moreover, one Russian media outlet speculated that Saddam's secret
archives could already be in Moscow. On Apr.9 'Nezavisimaya Gazeta'
daily alleged that the attack by the U.S. rangers on the Russian
ambassador's convoy near Baghdad was a direct clash between Russian's
Foreign Intelligence Service, SVR, and CIA.
"All the details could be revealed in fifty years only, when SVR is
expected to declassify its secret documents in 2053," Nezavisimaya
Gazeta said.
Meanwhile, Russia's critical attitude may be attributed to the fact
that Russian oil firms have the most to lose in a post-war Iraq as they
have signed contracts worth 4 billion dollars with the Saddam regime to
drill oil wells, deliver equipment and develop Iraq's oil reserves.
The key deal is a 3.7 billion dollar contract by LUKoil, Zarubezhneft
and Mashinnoimport to develop West Qurna.
Although Baghdad scrapped the deal in 2002, LUKoil said on Apr 8, it
would block West Qurna development for many years if any U.S. or British
firm decided to challenge its role in the project.
LUKoil vice president Leonid Fedun told Kommersant daily that the
firm would sue any new contender for the field in the Geneva arbitration
court for at least 20 billion dollars and ask to arrest tankers with
Iraqi crude oil.
"Nobody can develop this field without us in the next eight years as
we are going to arrest tankers with crude produced in Iraq," Fedun said.
However, Nikolai Tokarev, head of Zarubezhneft, has sounded more
sceptical about chances of keeping Russia's existing deals and recouping
losses by international law suits. He has told journalists in Moscow
that Zarubezhneft lost some 200 million dollars as a result of the
U.S.-led war.
According to Tokarev, Russian firms may have a chance to recover
their losses only if the United Nations denounces the war as
"aggression", thus giving Russian oil companies legal rights to appeal
to international courts. (END/2003)
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