MOSCOW, April 23 (RIA Novosti) Georgia lost Abkhazia forever/ Azerbaijan holds back completion of Bushehr plant/ Moscow benefits from Beijing's Olympic problems/ Experts discussing possible dangers to Soyuz space crew
Kommersant
Georgia lost Abkhazia forever
President Vladimir Putin's last instructions to the government regarding Abkhazia essentially have to do with irreversibly integrating the self-proclaimed republic into Russia's economic space. After being given a chance to openly use Russian investments, build resort hotels, open branches of Russian banks and receive Russian tourists, Abkhazia will never be part of Georgia again.
Most Georgia politicians realize that they have lost Abkhazia. Former parliament speaker Nino Burdzhanadze certainly knows it, too. She did not resign because her team was not on the election list. The Georgian 'iron lady' never thrashed about, not even when opposition members went on hunger strike in her outer office or when President Mikhail Saakashvili made several important personnel decisions without asking for his faithful aide's opinion. But she clearly does not want to be one of the country's leaders at a time when part of its territory is slipping away and share the responsibility for the national tragedy with Saakashvili.
It is needless to describe the fate that would befall a government at a time when the Georgians realize that Sukhumi has become a different country. People's outrage will lead to a kind of upheaval that the "Rose Revolution" crowds will seem tame by comparison. This, partly, is what the Kremlin counting on while pursuing its policy of Abkhazia's step-by-step integration.
Saakashvili, in turn, knows only too well, what will happen to him personally if he fails to reverse the situation now. He will go politically bankrupt. He will have nothing to show to his own people for his years in office, not even a prospect of an early accession to NATO. With a breakaway Abkhazia, Georgia's accession to the Membership Action Plan any time soon will be out of the question, let alone in December 2008.
As a result, Saakashvili might be forced to step down long before the end of his tenure. That is why he is showing a lot of activity these days, beating the alarm, calling Putin, [George] Bush, requesting an extraordinary meeting of the UN Security Council under the pretext of some vague spying plane story. But frankly speaking, there is little chance that the international community will be able to talk Moscow into abandoning its current policy.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Azerbaijan holds back completion of Bushehr plant
Russia may fail to complete the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran by September 2008, because Azerbaijan's customs officials have been keeping a Russian truck convoy carrying heat insulation equipment for the plant on the border since March 29.
Azerbaijan claims the cargo lacks a special permit, but analysts view this as Baku's desire to demonstrate loyalty to the United States and strength to Russia.
Natik Akhundov, press secretary of Azerbaijan's State Customs Committee, said yesterday that Atomstroyexport needs a special permit for the transit of equipment across Azerbaijan to Iran.
Atomstroyexport is Russia's nuclear power equipment and service export monopoly, building the Bushehr nuclear power plant.
"The cargo was registered in line with Russian and international customs requirements, and all documents were prepared in advance," said Irina Yesipova, spokesperson of the Russian company.
Experts said the delay might postpone the commissioning of Bushehr's first stage. Initially, Russia pledged to complete construction in 1999.
Atomstroyexport sent the first batch of nuclear fuel to the plant in February 2008 and announced that its trial use would begin in July or August, so that the plant would be ready for commissioning in September.
Natalia Sviridova of the 2K Audit-Business Consulting company said the cargo was detained for purely technical reasons.
"We know how to solve the problem now that Azerbaijani authorities have named the reason," she said. "It will be settled very soon."
But Agvan Mikaelyan, director general of the FinExpertiza audit and consulting group, said there were political reasons behind Azerbaijan's decision to detain the Russian convoy.
"The recent lifting of sanctions from Abkhazia and South Ossetia has clearly alarmed Baku authorities, who have a headache of their own in Nagorny Karabakh," Mikaelyan said. "By detaining a cargo that is politically important to Russia, Baku wanted to show the consequences of a potential change in Russia's stance on Karabakh."
Mikaelyan said Azerbaijan was also showing loyalty to the United States, which is irritated by Iran's nuclear program.
Izvestia
Moscow benefits from Beijing's Olympic problems
A possible boycott of the upcoming Beijing Olympics will not affect Russian interests because Moscow is not involved in the current standoff between the West and China.
Instead of losing, Russia could even benefit from the situation.
China, which is drifting closer to Russia, could make concessions, heed Moscow's interests in such sensitive regions as Central Asia and back down on fuel and energy exports.
Beijing and the West are debating the Tibet issue and human rights. China also has its hands tied on the Taiwan issue. Consequently, Beijing will not think about developing the sparsely populated Siberia and the Russian Far East in the foreseeable future.
Moscow will profit from China's problems in relations with Taiwan, tensions around the Beijing Olympics, unrest in Tibet and separatism in the Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Region.
Russian negotiators should keep all this in mind when dealing with their Chinese counterparts.
Izvestia
Experts discussing possible dangers to Soyuz space crew
On Saturday the Soyuz TMA-11 capsule carrying U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson, Russian flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko, and South Korean bioengineer Yi So-yeon from the International Space Station (ISS), made a bumpy re-entry, landing 420 km (260 miles) off target in the steppes of northern Kazakhstan.
On Tuesday evening, a source in the Russian space industry said on condition of anonymity that the descent module had almost become depressurized, and that the crew could have been killed.
An anonymous senior Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) official said there was not yet enough information to find out what had caused the craft to descend along a ballistic trajectory.
He said people always reacted emotionally to all aspects of manned space missions, and that the expert had made a hasty assessment.
"This is a very unpleasant situation because human lives come first. Several descent modules have reentered the atmosphere hatch-down. But it would be pointless to discuss possible risks in the Soyuz TMA-11 case because this would hinder the investigation," the official told the paper.
The number of annual Soyuz launches will increase from two to three or four after all U.S. space shuttles are grounded next year. No more space tourists will fly to the ISS, which will be crewed by six astronauts.
Launch prices negotiated by NASA and Roscosmos could total $2 billion; but they could plunge if the United States becomes convinced that Russian spacecraft are unreliable.
Subtle media maneuvers could greatly affect this issue where much is at stake. The anonymous expert claimed that U.S. space systems were used to locate the ISS crew. But the Roscosmos official disagreed because Russian search-and-rescue teams had located the Soyuz capsule.
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