RUSSIA-U.S.: Russian General Adjusts Image to Woo United States

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Jan 22 1997 (IPS) - Russian General Alexander Lebed, depicted until recently in the United States as a nationalist and authoritarian, has stepped up his charm offensive to prove to politicians and investors here that he could be their man.

Lebed, on his second U.S. trip within a month, plans to spend several days in New York courting Wall Street after attending President Bill Clinton’s second inauguration in Washington Monday.

The general, who was head of President Boris Yeltsin’s National Security Council until his dismissal in October, argues that, as risky an investment as Russia is now, investors should scramble there anyway — because he would set the economy right when he assumes power.

Currently, he says, any number of unneccessary regulations hinder foreign investment.

“These stupidities I should remove sooner or later,” Lebed said here Tuesday, leaving no doubt that he intends to occupy Yeltsin’s seat.

The general, rated as Russia’s most popular politician in most polls, left little doubt that he would prefer sooner to later. Yeltsin’s ill health, he argued, should prompt Russians to rethink whether he can serve a full second term, which Yeltsin won last summer.

“The presidential health drama is turning into a national nightmare,” Lebed said. The ailing Yeltsin, who this week returned home after 12 days of medical treatment for pneumonia, “should himself assess the situation and make a conclusion if he can indeed run the country.”

Lebed argued the current paralysis of the government also makes the case for a less top-heavy separation of powers and a Constitution which divides powers among the executive and legislative branches more equally.

Yet on this trip, Lebed’s short-term push against the Yeltsin government that has alternately promoted and dismissed him took a back seat to the need to brush up his U.S. image.

Appearing at the United Nations, the general said that Russian- U.S. relations have been characterised by caution for too long. “I came here precisely to change this relationship,” he argued. “I am trying to raise the level of trust.”

Those words could apply equally to Lebed’s own image in the United States. Anthony Pell, a U.S. lobbyist who helped arrange his current trip, said the general has suffered here from being regarded as “an authoritarian and a peasant”.

Lebed’s dismissive comments about Jews and Mormons and his comparisons of himself to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet have hurt him among decision-makers here. Lebed is eager to dispel that image, Pell said, noting the general’s wry comments to the Russian press in Washington that he had brought along a dinner jacket and socks.

His words have also been soothing. “I am a proponent of the legitimate exchange of power,” he told the press. “We are making wars no more. The only things I kill now are wars.”

He also soft-pedaled his opposition to the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), where he has built a reputation as an ardent opponent of the military alliance’s drive to attract Eastern European members. “NATO has made a decision — it will move on,” he conceded. The battle now, he argued, is for NATO and Russia to work together on mutual concerns, from nuclear terrorism to drug trafficking.

With Yeltsin seeming increasingly frail and Lebed increasingly popular — he ran third in the first round of elections last year despite a small campaign — the general is attracting larger audiences with every U.S. trip.

Two Republican senators, William Roth of Delaware and Gordon Smith of Oregon, greeted him in Washington. He has also met with executives of the DuPont chemical conglomerate, developer Donald Trump, and Mahmoud Mamdani, emerging markets director for the Morgan Stanley firm.

For now, Lebed has it easy. He can dissociate himself from the flailing Russian government, while he can at the same time take credit for brokering last year’s peace agreement with rebels in Chechnya, which halted the brutal fighting there and has paved the way for elections slated for Jan 27.

“We are on the eve of a new beginning for Chechnya,” said Mohammed Shashani, an engineering professor at Pennsylvania State University who is the U.S. spokesman for the pro-independence Chechen groups. He said he was confident of a free and fair election, after which Chechnya will try to attract some 120 billion dollars to rebuild the war-ravaged, semi-autonomous Russian republic.

“We have resolved the (Chechen) problem,” Lebed said, claiming that “only a few technical problems” need to be addressed for the time being. The agreement he brokered, which puts the Chechen independence drive on hold for five years, should be able to give Russians and Chechens time to rebuild following a war in which more than 100,000 people were killed, he added.

The general remains vague on what vision he has for Chechnya’s future, months after he was accused by others in the Yeltsin government of bowing to the pro-independence movement. Ultimately, he said, he sees “a wonderful precedent” for Chechnya in the status of Bavaria as a “free state” within Germany.

Still, even such a concession is a big one for the man who aspires to lead what, at the beginning of this decade, was the central part of the Soviet Union. But Lebed told his audience that, contrary to his nationalist reputation, he does not see Russia as a superpower. “If you are sitting in a muddy pond, the first thing is not to make noises about how great you are,” he said. “It wouldn’t look right.”