MOSCOW, April 16 (RIA Novosti) Any opposition activity makes Putin overreact - expert/Berezovsky is providing a pretext to cancel 2008 presidential election in Russia/India's debt to the Soviet Union to be converted to property/Heineken St. Petersburg goes on "Italian strike"/Human rights activists confront Federal Registration Service
Gazeta, Kommersant
Any opposition activity makes Putin overreact - expert
The Other Russia movement did organize a Dissenters' March in Moscow Saturday, in defiance of all bans, but the police and army vastly outnumbered the protesters and reacted harshly.
According to official figures, about 170 people were detained and dozens beaten up. Nevertheless, the marchers achieved their objective - the authorities, instead of allowing the opposition to stage a modest event, turned downtown Moscow into a testing ground for military exercises. Sunday saw a repeat of the action in St. Petersburg.
Stanislav Belkovsky, head of the National Strategy Institute, said: "From a political point of view, the authorities had no cause to fear marches like the one on Saturday. If all events planned for the march had been permitted, then 6,000-7,000 people would have calmly walked through the city, in no way threatening the existing system.
"Putin failed to understand the causes of the Orange Revolution, failed to grasp the mechanism of its rise. And what is not understood fuels fear. Any public opposition activity makes Putin overreact.
"For people working in the Kremlin system and in the Kremlin orbit, the struggle against the opposition is a business. The struggle against the opposition in today's Russia is a very profitable business. If the Kremlin perceived the opposition adequately and maintained an adequate dialogue, it would not, first, be spending millions of dollars on such spin projects as Nashi (Ours) and the Young Guard, nor on training and indoctrinating members of these phantom bodies. Second, security agencies also get additional funds for operations to disperse opposition activities."
Dmitry Oreshkin, head of the Mercator think tank, said: "The authorities themselves give rise to a non-systemic opposition."
Andrei Illarionov, ex-adviser to President Putin, said: "As long as incorporated secret services run the state, society will be looking for a way to enforce violence to change the system. Society uses the methods that are available at hand."
Vremya Novostei
Berezovsky is providing a pretext to cancel 2008 presidential election in Russia
Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has confirmed his reputation as an unmatched master of political provocation.
Shortly before two March of Dissent rallies, which took place in Moscow and St. Petersburg April 14 and 15, when the lower house of parliament adopted a letter of protest against the U.S. State Department's annual human rights report, Berezovsky told The Guardian that he was plotting a violent overthrow of President Putin.
Claiming to be in close contact with members of Russia's political elite who, he said, share his view that Putin is damaging Russia by rolling back democratic reforms, smothering opposition, centralizing power and flouting the country's Constitution, he said there were practical steps which he was taking, mostly financial.
The Russian authorities were delighted. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Berezovsky had violated his status as a political refugee by issuing calls for Putin's overthrow. Prosecutor General Yury Chaika promised to open a new criminal case against the tycoon.
Berezovsky is not simply pouring oil on the fire and giving the Russian authorities a pretext for justifying their harsh treatment of dissidents (a violent overthrow of power is a crime in any country).
He is also creating the ideological preconditions for cancelling or postponing the presidential election.
In effect, he is playing into the hands of the Kremlin elite, who would do anything to keep Putin in power for a third term as the only guarantor of their influence and business interests.
Berezovsky could be an ideal host of a news program on Russia's First Channel, because his formulas sound exactly like the horror stories Russian TV is using to brainwash Russians.
A violent change of the regime or the use of violence to preserve it are the last thing Russia, which has suffered enough from revolutions and state-controlled terror, needs.
Therefore, Berezovsky's interview with The Guardian is inciting the Russian authorities to clamp down on the people, to intensify the search for the "enemies within" and a policy of discrediting any citizen or politician who refuses to accept developments in Russia at face value.
In fact, this is an attempt to give free rein to the regime, which the political refugee in London allegedly hates.
Kommersant
India's debt to the Soviet Union to be converted to property
The Russian Federation and India signed an agreement Saturday that would change the procedure of India's repayment of its debt to the former Soviet Union.
Part of India's debt ($126 million) will be reinvested in the joint venture producing titanium dioxide on India's territory, and the Finance Ministry has plans to expand that scheme on the remainder of India's debt as well.
In the next three years, a large chemical and metallurgical facility is to be built in India to produce 40,000 tons of titanium dioxide, 132,000 tons of titanium tetrachloride, 10,000 tons of titanium sponge and 108,000 tons of titanium slag annually. Russia will own 55% of its stock, with 51% belonging to the government, and 4% to Tekhnokhim Holding, a St. Petersburg-based engineering company.
Russia is envisaging a project that could serve as a basis for changing the total Indian debt repayment scheme, but its overall cost has not even been calculated yet.
Russia's Finance Ministry is estimating $3 billion, India, $1 billion. As of now, the sides agreed on an amount in Indian rupees equivalent to $1 billion placed with Russian Vneshekonombank's (VEB) accounts in the Reserve Bank of India.
Under the scheme that Russia has been trying to amend since 2002, India's debt is to be gradually sold to Russian companies importing traditional Indian goods such as tea, coffee and textiles.
Top Russian officials have been persuading India to replace imports with the investment scheme. Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov made the proposal in March 2006 and President Vladimir Putin repeated it in the course of his January 2007 official visit to New Delhi. Finally, the first investment project has been launched.
The Finance Ministry will now be working on a standardized agreement covering the remainder of India's debt. The scheme can also be applied to the neighboring countries' debts to Russia, the ministry said. Pakistan's debt, for one, was not settled during Fradkov's visit to Islamabad last week.
According to Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak, Russia and Pakistan both have counterclaims. Russia has not repaid the former Soviet Union's debt for compensation and freight operations. Pakistan responded by freezing VEB's Pakistani rupee accounts in its banks.
According to Russian Finance Ministry estimates, the balance of Russian-Pakistani counterclaims is between $100 million and $128 million in Russia's favor. This margin would be enough for at least one large investment project.
Vedomosti, Kommersant
Heineken St. Petersburg goes on "Italian strike"
The management of Heineken's St. Petersburg brewery claims the company is working as usual, although the trade union has begun a so-called "Italian strike."
Analysts have advised the management not to aggravate the conflict, because the high profitability of the beer sector allows for higher salaries.
The brewery's staff wants a 30% increase, and another 8%-10% for personnel working in hazardous areas. Valery Sokolov, the trade union chief at the brewery, said the staff would work according to the rules until the management agrees to discuss the issue. The management refused to meet with the workers Friday.
Igor Gushchev, a partner at Duvernoix Legal, said the conflict at Heineken St. Petersburg was provoked by differences in the interpretation of the Labor Code.
The profitability of the beer industry is very high. Maxim Saenkov, an analyst with the CIT Finance investment bank, said: "The example of Baltika shows that profitability in the sector can reach 40%, and that the sector's companies have a margin for increasing wages. The experience of trade unions at enterprises in St. Petersburg shows that the workers eventually get what they want. Heineken's personnel policy is its internal affair, but I don't think it would benefit from aggravating the conflict."
In January 2006, the trade union at Heineken St. Petersburg demanded a 50% rise in wages. Heineken raised them 27%-30% in March.
Ford Motors had problems with trade unions at its plant in Vsevolozhsk in the Leningrad Region, where the workers twice stopped production, in autumn 2005 and in February 2007, getting a 14% wage increase both times. The other day, a trade union was established at the Moscow factory of Avtoframos, controlled by Renault.
Yegor Noskov, a managing partner at Duvernoix Legal, said the trade union movement in Russia would grow stronger primarily at the plants of major Western companies, because wages are paid there 100% legally, without under-the-counter payments.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Human rights activists confront Federal Registration Service
Human rights activists were outraged over a new procedure for filing financial and other reports by non-governmental organizations and accused the Federal Registration Service of copying tax agency functions.
The Justice Ministry told NGOs not to become hysterical and said the procedure would do them no harm.
The confrontation between the Federal Registration Service and NGOs has political aspects, with NGOs seen as the main element complicating Moscow's relations with the West.
Sergei Markov, member of the Public Chamber, an oversight committee with consultative powers, said NGOs are the main political weapon of the 21st century. He said power was mostly gained through political coups and by political parties in the 19th and 20th centuries.
According to Markov, NGOs are now the best way to enhance political power. "The U.S. Department of State has openly said the West will provide additional funding for NGOs on the threshold of Russian parliamentary and presidential elections," he told the paper.
Yury Dzhibladze, president of the Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights, said the authorities are politicizing the NGO issue. He said only those facing election pressure in the last few years are in the spotlight.
"Human rights NGOs, those opposing corruption and trying to make the government more transparent, are automatically politicized, because their opinion of these issues differs from the official stand," Dzhibladze said.
Influential pollster VTSIOM said 40% of the respondents do not notice the work of NGOs and consider it unimportant.
"We are witnessing society's increased de-politicization," Maria Lipman of Carnegie Moscow Center said. Russians are now feeling apathetic. They believe nothing depends on them because the authorities decide everything.
Russian businessmen are in no mood to cooperate with local NGOs because they think grants may be misused and because they do not want to become involved in politics. The business community does not finance any politically motivated projects.
"Businessmen have learned their lesson. This concerns the arrest of disgraced oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky on tax-evasion charges and the case against Neftyanoi Bank, which was accused of money-laundering," Lipman told the paper.
RIA Novosti is not responsible for the content of outside sources.
