MOSCOW, March 20 (RIA Novosti)
United States to establish contacts with SCO / Russia can gain political influence over Belarus only through economic means / Government throws Russian debtors to foreign creditors / Number of Russian officials doubles under Putin /
RBC Daily
United States to establish contacts with SCO
On March 27, Moscow will host a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan. This will be the first time that a high-ranking U.S. diplomat, namely, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Patrick Moon, has attended an SCO event.
Until now, Washington openly ignored the SCO, fearing greater Russian influence over China and Central Asia. However, the United States, which cannot independently solve the problems of Afghanistan and Iran, is now forced to revise its stand on the SCO.
The Shanghai Five, comprising Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, was established in 1996. Uzbekistan joined the new organization in 2001. India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan have observer-nation status with the SCO, while Afghanistan has guest-nation status.
"The United States is sinking deeper into the Afghan quagmire, while the SCO is the only international organization uniting all countries involved in the Afghan conflict," a Russian diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
Sergei Demidenko, an analyst with the Russian Institute of Strategic Assessment and Analysis, said U.S.-SCO cooperation could also help Washington to restore ties with Iran.
"Washington and Shiite Tehran could team up on the Afghan issue because Sunni Muslims from the Taliban and Al Qaeda movements are their common enemy," Demidenko said.
In March 2008, Iran applied for full-fledged SCO membership. The organization could become an ideal platform for U.S.-Iranian cooperation on Afghanistan and other issues.
Kommersant
Russia can gain political influence over Belarus only through economic means
Recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia's independence by Belarus, something Moscow is pressing Minsk hard for, is unlikely to change much in unloosening the tight North Caucasus knot, Boris Makarenko, head of the Center for Political Technologies, writes.
When the Caucasus war was over, Europe decided that with relations with Moscow getting increasingly complicated, it could not afford to ignore ties with any of its neighbors. This set off a war of symbols - the lifting of visa sanctions, approval of an IMF loan for Minsk, and the carrot of inclusion in the Eastern Partnership program. The line is so simple and plain that even Minsk's theoretical recognition of Sukhumi and Tskhinvali will not make the West abandon it.
But what does Moscow need from Minsk? First and foremost, it should understand that the patron-client model in international relations will survive in the 21st century, too, but that in every century it functions differently. Vassals no longer bring tribute to their master (rather they milk him), and political loyalty is bought not with garrisons or viceroys, but through soft diplomacy.
Russia can lord it on the post-Soviet space on one condition only: it will not be the lordship of a white tsar or a Communist Party secretary approved on Moscow's Old Square, where the Soviet Communist Party had its headquarters. The only successful lordship can only be that of a big country giving an example of development and exporting this success to "fellow nations."
Moscow should make an inventory of its relations with Minsk. President Lukashenko is fond of saying that the Belarusian industry provides hundreds of thousands of Russians with jobs. But in the absence of these Russians, the Belarusian economy would have ground to a halt, because since Soviet days Belarus has been a huge "assembly shop," the final stage of economic links stretching from all over the former Soviet Union, and has not changed its profile in the past 20 years. But the crisis does not discriminate. And it is in Russia's interests not to let the Belarusian economy fall - they are interconnected. And if this cooperation develops, no Western influence in Belarus will turn its gaze away from Russia.
Vedomosti, Kommersant
Government throws Russian debtors to foreign creditors
The government does not seem to think it a big deal if Russian assets get into the hands of foreign banks. First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said the debt UC Russian Aluminum (RusAl) owes the state would not be exchanged for the holding's shares. On the other hand, the government is not preventing RusAl's foreign creditors from obtaining stakes in the world's largest aluminum producer this way.
Investment banks do not think creditors would welcome the decision. The government is leaving them to face Russian debtors on their own.
Last fall, the Russian government spared no effort to prevent foreign banks from gaining control over Russian stakes pledged to secure large corporations' loans. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin initiated the policy, and RusAl was the first company to take out a $4.5 billion loan from the Development Bank (VEB) to clear a foreign loan secured with a 25% stake in Norilsk Nickel.
Alfa Group was issued $2 billion to bail the 44% VimpelCom stake out of Deutsche Bank. PIK, Sitronics and other companies took out smaller loans.
"It seemed at the beginning of the downturn that Russia had a lot of cash. Now the government has realized that its resources aren't unlimited and might not last the country throughout the hard times," said Yulia Tseplyayeva, chief economist with Merrill Lynch. "Officials must have realized that the crisis will last longer and have left shareholders to solve their own problems, possibly by attracting foreign investors."
"No one said foreign creditors could not gain ownership of a certain part of Russian assets. It is important that this part do not reach a critical mass," a government official explained.
The prime minister's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, added it was important to avoid the bankruptcy of strategic companies. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said he did not rule out this risk, but confirmed the government's decision not to buy into UC RusAl to help it pay its debts.
The government has stakes in other companies, and will take care of them like any major shareholder. The money for this purpose has been earmarked, Kudrin said.
UC RusAl is not running a high risk of being controlled by a foreign owner. Two of the company's creditors said no one had offered them the possibility of trading off debt for shares. "We aren't interested in this, and would rather have our money back," one of them said.
Gazeta.ru, Vedomosti
Number of Russian officials doubles under Putin
The Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) said the number of civil servants had soared from 485,566 to 846,307 between 1999 and October 2008, a 74% increase.
The national administrative machinery, which also comprises state-power agencies' officials not listed among civil servants, has swelled from a million to 1.8 million people, exceeding the number of officials prior to the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Analysts say society has been overloaded, citing this as one of the causes of the current economic crisis.
Under President Vladimir Putin, the bureaucratic machinery swelled despite job cuts and proposed administrative reforms. In 2004, the Kremlin announced a decision to cut the 1,500-member Presidential Executive Office by 20%.
Presidential Executive Office head Sergei Naryshkin recently decided to axe another 100 jobs and was surprised to learn shortly afterwards that the Executive Office employed the same number of officials - 1,500.
Olga Kryshtanovskaya, director of the independent Institute of Applied Politics, said an increase of nearly 100% in the number of civil servants highlighted a nationwide bureaucratization.
She said in 1981, the 400,000-strong Soviet political elite, namely, Communist Party officials and military personnel, accounted for 0.1% of the 300-million population.
In 2000, the 1.2-million Russian political elite comprised 0.8% of the 145-million population. Kryshtanovskaya said the country's political elite had topped 3 million by early 2009, despite negative population growth.
She said officials now accounted for over 2% of the population, and that society was being overloaded. "This factor has probably contributed to our economic problems because state-machinery allocations should not exceed a certain limit," Kryshtanovskaya said.
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