DATE=12/23/1999
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=YEARENDER: RUSSIA / WEST RELATIONS
NUMBER=5-45105
BYLINE=EVE CONANT
DATELINE=MOSCOW
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: During the past year, Russia's warm relations
with the West soured; with disputes about the Kosovo
war, expanded NATO membership, financial scandals,
nuclear arms treaties, diplomatic spying, and Russia's
war in Chechnya. Moscow Correspondent Eve Conant
looks back on a year that saw post-Soviet Russia's
relations with the West reach an all time low.
TEXT: Russia's relations with the West by the end of
1999 can perhaps be best summed up with a warning made
by President Boris Yeltsin to the United States. Mr.
Yeltsin -- during an official visit to China in early
December -- accused the United States of using what he
called a "language of force" with Russia.
/// YELTSIN ACT - IN RUSSIAN - FADE UNDER ///
President Yeltsin says -- perhaps President Clinton
has forgotten that Russia has a full arsenal of
nuclear weapons. He says that Mr. Clinton seems to
have forgotten what kind of world he lives in. And,
Mr. Yeltsin says -- it has never been and never will
be the kind of world where the U-S president can
dictate to the whole world how to live.
In past years, the Yeltsin-and-Clinton relationship
was one of bear hugs and talk of mutual understanding.
By the end of 1999 things had certainly changed.
Mr. Yeltsin's latest comments followed a year of U-S
led NATO air strikes on Iraq and then Serbia, Russia's
Slav and Orthodox ally. And, independent military
analyst Pavel Felgenhauer says relations are going
from bad to worse.
/// FELGENHAUER ACT ONE ///
Deterioration, growing deterioration, and
especially on the public level. Anti-Western
feelings have been growing in Russia since the
financial collapse of 1998. Then came the NATO
war in the Balkans and very serious upsurge of
anti-Western feelings. Now there is the war in
Chechnya and the Russian public mostly supports
this war. Western criticism is seen as meddling
in Russia's affairs. For public opinion in the
West, Russia is increasingly a barbaric country
that uses heavy weapons to hit civilians in the
Caucasus.
/// END ACT ///
In a meeting with top generals, Russia's defense
minister accused the West of stirring up trouble in
the Caucasus to benefit U-S geopolitical interests.
Soon after, several Caucasus nations and Turkey signed
a U-S backed multibillion-dollar pipeline agreement
that bypassed Russia.
Analyst Pavel Felgenhauer says that after months of
feeling ignored by the West as NATO bombed Serbia,
Russia's political and military leaders were unmoved
when Western moral interventionists, as he calls them,
cried out against the Chechnya offensive.
/// FELGENHAUER ACT TWO ///
The result of this has been not simply a cooling
of relations, but a very serious breakdown of
international law over the last year. This
breakdown of international law creates a
situation in the world that is much more
dangerous than in Cold War times. Of course,
before there was confrontation in Europe and
globally, but there were certain rules both
sides adhered to.
/// END ACT ///
Some of those international rules Mr. Felgenhauer is
referring to are nuclear arms agreements. Russia is
vehemently opposed to a U-S proposal to amend the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which Russia regards as
the cornerstone of all arms deals.
Nineteen-Ninety-Nine also saw Russia prepare a new
draft military doctrine, one which allows for the
first use of nuclear weapons. The proposal has not
been passed into law, but is another sign of Russia's
intensified desire to be regarded as a tough, leading
nuclear power.
It was the year that Russia froze relations with NATO.
One day after NATO began air strikes against Serbia,
Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov gave his
appraisal of a new Western philosophy that put human
rights above sovereignty.
/// IVANOV ACT - IN RUSSIAN - FADE UNDER ///
He says that for the first time since World War Two,
an act of aggression was committed against a sovereign
state in Europe. Yesterday it was Iraq -- he says --
today it is Yugoslavia, who is next? He says the U-S
goals are obvious -- to establish a political,
military, and economic dictatorship over the entire
world."
The U-S embassy's outer walls would soon be spattered
with paint and broken glass after hundreds of
protestors vented their rage at what they called U-S
warmongering and hypocrisy
And on the financial front, 1999 saw financial
scandals rock the West's perception of Russia.
Americans were shocked by allegations that Russia
laundered more than 10-billion dollars through a New
York bank.
An analyst with the U-S-A-Canada Institute, Viktor
Kremenyuk, say the scandal embarrassed Russian
officials, who called the reports a Western conspiracy
to undermine Russia's prestige, but did not surprise
average Russians.
/// KREMENYUK ACT ///
First of all, it was good that the Americans
ceased to regard Mr. Yeltsin and his regime as
guarantors of democracy in Russia, which was
simply ridiculous. And secondly, it is good
that the people of the United States have
understood at least part of our problem. Part
of the problems I hope they have understood is
that we face an oligarchic regime, very corrupt,
which abuses the law, abuses the constitution,
abuses everything.
/// END ACT ///
But reaction to the financial scandals, tit-for-tat
(retaliatory) spy expulsions, and nuclear brinkmanship
seem to show such an understanding has not been
reached.
Nineteen-Ninety-Nine was the start of election season
for both Russia and the United States. Russians voted
in a new parliament that supports a war in Chechnya
that the West strongly condemns.
Average Russians say the West has let them down. And
after a decade of following Western guidelines, the
time has come for a strong-handed leader that will not
compromise so much with the West, but will instead
keep Russia's national interests first and foremost.
(SIGNED)
NEB/EC/JWH/RAE
23-Dec-1999 10:30 AM EDT (23-Dec-1999 1530 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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