MOSCOW, March 23 (RIA Novosti) Adoption of new Iran resolution blocked by non-permanent members/NMD exercises pose no threat to Russia - experts /EADS gives Russia 5% stake in A-350 airliner project/Total to cut oil production at its Russian field/Moscow clears itself of expansionism charges in Transdnestr
Kommersant
Adoption of new Iran resolution blocked by non-permanent members
Failure to agree on a new Iran resolution at the UN Security Council points to new trends, if not major changes, in that organization.
The five permanent members of the Security Council are often described as "the global politburo."
No matter how active the members of the UN General Assembly or the non-permanent members of the Security Council may have been, their opinions were accepted only as useful information for consideration by the five permanent members, who made decisions behind closed doors.
The system experienced a shock when three of the 10 non-permanent members proposed amendments to the Iran resolution, which was drafted and coordinated by the "politburo." These are not skin-deep amendments, but changes that can sink the draft resolution.
The general reaction to the failure to approve the resolution has been mixed.
First, Britain, which initiated the draft resolution to toughen sanctions against Iran for its refusal to end its uranium enrichment activities and adhere to the previous resolution, and the United States, which supported it, seemed to be disappointed and even irritated by the new development.
Second, South Africa, which was the driver behind the proposed amendments, appeared calm and confident.
And third, the Russian and Chinese delegates did not appear to be surprised, and the Russian representative even said he saw quite a few positive elements in the proposed amendments.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in the lower house of Russia's parliament shortly before discussions in the Security Council that Russia "will not support excessively tough sanctions against Iran."
The Chinese delegate in the Security Council also hinted several days before the voting that the new Iran resolution had a much longer road ahead of it than its initiators expected.
It appears that Russia and China knew about the "collusion" of non-permanent members, or guessed their plans, or possibly even helped South Africa, Indonesia and Qatar to formulate the amendments.
These are suppositions, but the fact is that the move by the non-permanent members has changed realities in the Security Council. The five permanent members can no longer guarantee an unimpeded approval of documents.
Izvestia
NMD exercises pose no threat to Russia - experts
The United States successfully tested its national missile defense (NMD) system Wednesday. The tests took place off the Russian nuclear submarine base on Kamchatka, but, according to specialists, they pose no threat to Russia.
The U.S. is planning to complete all trials and place the NMD in operational readiness in 2007.
For now, the system includes 14 anti-missile units in Alaska and two more in California. This year, their number will be increased to 21 and four, respectively, while by 2011 Alaska should have 40 missiles.
An SBX (Sea Based X-Band) radar, an element of the U.S. anti-missile system, was used to follow the path of a Minuteman 2 missile drone. The radar had been ferried from the Hawaiian to the Aleutian Islands.
"The SBX is meant for space monitoring," said Vladimir Dvorkin, until 2001 director of the Fourth Research Institute of the Defense Ministry of Russia (concerned with the development and use of nuclear weapons).
"As part of an NMD it can, of course, be of some, though not very serious, help in tracking missile launches," he said.
No system exists today to identify the type of warhead installed on a missile - whether it is chemical, biological, nuclear or conventional high explosive.
The SBX cannot even tell actual warheads from decoys released by penetration aids. Russia's medium-range Pioner system, which only has one nuclear warhead, deploys up to a thousand decoys.
Those who have witnessed Pioner launches say that as a warhead entered the denser atmosphere the sky would burst into a myriad of colors, like fireworks.
Display monitors at the tracking station would go haywire, with the operator unable to determine where the target was and where it was heading.
U.S. NMD exercises do not threaten Russia. But they do offer a fair chance to judge the potential of the American system and its future prospects, enabling Russian designers to make timely changes to penetration aids.
"The sword is cheaper than the shield," they said at the Moscow Institute of Heat Engineering, which developed the latest Topol-M intercontinental system. "And no matter how advanced the shield may be, the sword always defeats it."
Gazeta/Kommersant
EADS gives Russia 5% stake in A-350 airliner project
Russia's state-controlled United Aircraft Building Corporation (UABC), which consolidates the industry's production assets, and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) have completed talks on developing the A-350-XWB long-haul airliner.
Analysts expected Russia to receive a 10-15% stake in the $10 billion project. However, their hopes have not been realized.
"The sides discussed the 5% stake two years ago when the project first got underway," said Konstantin Makiyenko, Deputy Director at the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.
He said Moscow should have demanded more, because the Russian aircraft industry is now marked by positive trends, whereas Europe faces a less favorable situation.
On Thursday, Valery Okulov, general director of the national air carrier Aeroflot - Russian Airlines, and Airbus Managing Director Fabrice Bregier signed a letter of intent for the sale of 22 A-350-XWB airliners worth about $2 billion to Aeroflot in Moscow.
The deal must be finalized by late June. The final price will depend on the planes' catalogue value and traditional discounts.
On Thursday, UABC and EADS confirmed their intention to set up a joint venture that will convert Airbus passenger planes into cargo aircraft. Moreover, the sides agreed to analyze the cargo-plane market.
Industry experts said the agreements say nothing about bilateral cooperation in developing new products.
"Russia is offered more modest positions than are requested by some outspoken aircraft industry representatives," said Oleg Panteleyev, head of the Aviaport.Ru Web site's analytical department.
According to Panteleyev, the 5% stake reflects the Russian aircraft industry's real status.
He said EADS had previously offered $400 million contracts to Moscow, but Russian enterprises could eventually fulfill contracts worth not more than $200 million.
Maxim Pyadushkin, editor-in-chief of the aerospace publication Russia/CIS Observer, said the documents mostly reflect the strategy of the industry leader, Irkut Corporation (whose managers exchanged their shares for a stake and top positions in the Joint Aircraft Building Corporation).
"These high-sounding long-term agreements mostly imply that Russia is teaming up with Europe, rather than the United States," Pyadushkin told the paper.
Vedomosti
Total to cut oil production at its Russian field
French Total has asked permission to cut oil production at its Russian field by 33%, but Russian authorities are unlikely to agree.
The oil major wants to reduce the output endorsed in the previous process flow scheme for the second and third sections of the Kharyaga field, which is in the Nenets Autonomous Area and is being developed under a production-sharing agreement (PSA), from 3.5 million to 2.4 million metric tons, a company representative said.
The Natural Resources Ministry has long been worried about Total's output at the field.
During an inspection last year, the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources Usage discovered that the company had produced about 770,000 metric tons of crude in 2005 and 895,000 metric tons in 2006.
Last December, the Service's deputy head, Pyotr Sadovnik, said that Total's license could be revoked. Now it has launched another inspection of the project.
A spokesman for the French company said they were lagging behind because of insufficient financing in 2002-2004, when the Russian authorities failed to endorse the project's annual budgets and the company even had to turn to the Stockholm Arbitration Court.
In addition, output has been limited by the capacity of the pipeline from Usa in the north of the European part of Russia to Primorsk on the Baltic Sea.
It is controlled by the state-owned pipeline monopoly Transneft. Kharyaga's pumping quota for 2007 is 1.34 million metric tons, which means that the Total-led consortium will not be able to produce more, the spokesman said.
However, a ministry official said that the reduction in the output was ungrounded.
"The Kharyaga PSA envisages that work can go on even without an endorsed annual budget. Total can also ask Transneft to expand the pipeline," he said.
Sergei Grigoryev, Transneft's vice president, confirmed as much.
Last year, he said, the monopoly increased the sector's capacity from 18 million to 23.5 million metric tons at the request of oil producers.
"If Total had asked us to increase pumping by another 2 million metric tons, we would have done it, but this would have required additional investment from the company," he said.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Moscow clears itself of expansionism charges in Transdnestr
Supported by the state, Russian business is today buying up not only foreign assets, but entire republics on post-Soviet territory.
News broke Thursday that Gazprom, a Russian energy giant, passed Transdnestr's debt for Russian gas ($1.2 billion) over to Metalloinvest Holding, which is controlled by Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov.
Transdnestr's gas debt is equivalent to three times the republic's GDP and nearly 10 times its state budget.
The news caused a real stir in the unrecognized republic. On Thursday, its leadership spent the morning discussing the issue at a series of closed meetings.
In the end, the republic's president, Igor Smirnov, said: "Transdnestr has no legally contracted debt and never signed a contract with Gazprom. Let Moldova sort things out with Usmanov on what it owes him."
Gazprom made a formal reply Thursday. It said it did not hand over the debt to Metalloinvest, because Moldovagaz's indebtedness to the company for the gas supplied in 1997-2004 "was paid back in December 2005 by ceding the right of demand to the Factoring-Finance company."
Earlier, Moldovagaz chief, Gennady Abashkin, said Gazprom was the Factoring-Finance founder and needed the technical manipulation of the debt to formally close it.
"Usmanov is one of Gazprom's key business partners," political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky said Thursday.
"For a long time he has been in de facto charge of Transdnestrian affairs in the interests of the Russian gas monopoly, and has gained control over big industrial assets, including the Moldovan iron and steel works," Belkovsky said Thursday.
According to him, the debt handover from Gazprom to Usmanov fully meets Moscow's interests, with Russia cleared of charges of state expansionism in Transdnestr.
Control of Transdnestr by a private structure is called upon, according to the political expert, to ease the changing of Transdnestr from an unrecognized republic into a member of the Moldovan-Transdnestr Confederation.
The Transdnestr industrial sector is today virtually operated in its entirety by Russian companies, something challenged by Chisinau, which pledges to review the privatization results in the region once the Transdnestr conflict is settled.
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