RUSSIA: Russia is working hard to protect its interests in the event of war against Iraq. Daniel McLaughlin reports from Moscow
While vowing to prevent war in Iraq and warning of global instability and the dangers of regime-change, Russia is quietly pushing for a massive dollar-denominated windfall that it could claim by bowing to Washington's will in the Gulf.
Foreign Minister Mr Igor Ivanov, who has said Moscow may veto any resolution sanctioning war against President Saddam Hussein, reminded the US yesterday of the bitter taste that regime-change can leave.
"We cannot but be concerned by plans to force democratic principles onto an entire people," Mr Ivanov told Kommersant newspaper. "The Soviet Union had its own grim history of setting up 'suitable' regimes, and we know where that led. Unfortunately such experiments carry a heavy price, most of all to the people one is experimenting upon."
Moscow's ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, after desperately trying to prop its puppet-leader, must have been prominent in his mind. The chaos that engulfed the country and its Soviet occupiers led to the rise of Osama bin-Laden, the Taliban, Washington's war on terror and now the pursuit of Saddam Hussein as a possible proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.
But while Mr Ivanov warned Washington bluntly not to jeopardise the fight against terror or the authority of the UN by launching unilateral action against Iraq, one of his chief deputies soothed fraying US tempers and tried to wring maximum political and financial capital from Russia's key bargaining position.
Deputy Foreign Minister Mr Georgi Mamedov met the US ambassador to Moscow to "discuss possible ways to bring closer the Russian and US positions in the Security Council on the Iraq question," an official statement said after the meeting.
Mr Mamedov emerged from the "urgent" talks to reveal a useful but incomplete list of what Moscow wants from Washington in return for its support, or at least its non-opposition, to war in Iraq.
He told reporters that a key treaty reducing stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons would be placed before the US and Russian legislatures "in the coming weeks", a move which Moscow favours as it cannot pay for their safe storage.
Mr Mamedov, noting the presence of NASA's Moscow representative at the meeting, also underlined Russia's desire for extra US funding for its impoverished space agency, which says it cannot afford to build the extra Soyuz rockets needed to supply the International Space Station while the Space Shuttle is grounded after the demise of the Columbia.
"We are still discussing financing for our launches," he said, denouncing a US law that forbids extra funding for the space agency while Russia continues to help build a nuclear reactor in Iran, part of President Bush's "axis of evil". "There is no link here," Mr Mamedov said. "Our ties with Iran involve nothing that breaches our international commitments."
He also said Washington's recent inclusion of three Chechen rebel groups on its terrorist blacklist should be "only the first step". The Foreign Ministry said Mr Mamedov and the US Ambassador, Mr Alexander Vershbow, had discussed "more effective joint opposition of international terrorism, including that in the Caucasus".
Moscow has been severely piqued by Western criticism of its brutal war in Chechnya, which the Kremlin claims is financed by al-Qaeda-linked radicals.
Across town, another senior Russian minister was staking a claim for US funds. Atomic Energy Minister Mr Alexander Rumyantsev told reporters he would sign an agreement next week to close three nuclear power plants with the capability to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
Washington would fund the shutdown to the tune of "hundreds of millions of dollars", he said, adding that over $200 million more was needed to secure Russia's nuclear reactors against "terrorist acts".
Meanwhile, the latest planeload of Russians flew back to the safety of Moscow from Baghdad yesterday. Many worked in Iraq's oil industry, where Russian firms have huge contracts to exploit the country's reserves, the second largest in the world. Moscow is also owed $8 billion by Baghdad.
Analysts here say Washington must guarantee the safety of Moscow's interests in Iraq before Russia will agree to cash in its chips. It will not give them up cheaply.