MOSCOW
- Russian President Vladimir Putin's upcoming visit to
China is expected to improve what is officially
described as a strategic partnership between the two
countries, one driven by both economic and geopolitical
considerations. In strengthening this bilateral
relationship, Russia appears to be countering mounting
pressure from Washington concerning Moscow's internal
affairs.
Putin is due to visit China from
Thursday to Saturday this week for talks with President
Hu Jintao, with discussions expected to focus on
economic and strategic issues. Economic agreements to be signed
cover space flight, atomic energy, engineering
manufacturing, high technology, information technology
and communications.
Last month, Moscow promised
to supply more crude oil to China, while Beijing pledged
to invest US$12 billion in Russia's infrastructure and
energy sector by 2020. But despite economic incentives,
Beijing is yet to secure a clear commitment from Moscow
to build an oil pipeline from Siberia, a long-standing
issue between the two countries. Russia has promised to
build the oil pipeline to China as an extra stretch to
its Pacific pipeline, but a final decision is unlikely
to materialize soon.
Meanwhile,
Russian officials have suggested bilateral trade could hit
$20 billion this year, reaching the goal set by the
two countries last year - twice the level of 2001. The
nations have pledged to push bilateral trade past the
$60 billion mark by 2010, although that would mean no
less than the same robust 20% annual growth rate.
Furthermore, a deal supporting Russia's
accession to the World Trade Organization is scheduled
to be inked during Putin's three-day visit. In response,
Russia is expected to confirm Moscow's loyal stance
toward China over Taiwan and Tibet.
Apart from
economic matters, Russia has geopolitical interests for
improving ties with China as Moscow is growing
increasingly concerned with mounting US pressure on
the Kremlin. In recent weeks, Moscow has described comments
on a variety of events in Russia by the United States,
including moves to limit elections and boost centralized
controls, as "interference in Russia's internal
affairs".
Notably, in their first debate,
US President George W Bush and Democratic contender
Senator John Kerry voiced that Russia was rolling
back democratic reforms. Kerry criticized Putin's
recent moves to strengthen domestic centralized controls
as part of Russia's "war on terror". "I regret
what's happened in these past months. And I think it
goes beyond just the response to terror," he said in
the debate. "No, I don't think it's okay and said so
publicly," Bush said. However, Bush said he had "a good
relation with Vladimir" and regarded Putin as "a strong
ally in the war on terror".
As Russia-related
issues surfaced during the US presidential campaign,
Russian politicians sounded dismissive. The leader of
the nationalist Rodina party, Dmitry Rogozin, said Bush
and Kerry should mind their own business. "What we are
doing is our own internal affair," he said.
Moreover, concerns have been voiced in
Moscow that relations with the US could decline under
the Democrats. Russian media have speculated that
Kerry, if elected next month, might put extra pressure on
Moscow - and even include Russia in a new "axis of
evil", along with Iran and North Korea.
Indeed,
Democrats have voiced stronger criticism of Russia.
"We're concerned that Putin is getting a blank check,"
said Richard C Holbrooke, a former US ambassador to the
United Nations who is advising Kerry. "We need good
relations with Russia, but we ought to have some
standards here," he said.
Incidentally,
when citing his overseas travel in the first debate,
Kerry made a mistake by saying the cells of the KGB
headquarters in Moscow had been "under Treblinka Square". He
must have meant Lubyanka Square, as Treblinka was
a Nazi death camp in Poland.
Intentional or not, the mistake came as an ominous sign for
Moscow. For Putin, other top officials and former
fellow KGB officers, Lubyanka Square bears no bad meaning as
the site of the KGB headquarters. Hence Kerry's
confusing Lubyanka with Treblinka sounds almost
blasphemous in today's Russia.
Little wonder
that Russia tried to play on the US presidential
campaign in favor of the Republicans. In June, Russia
announced that it supplied the US with intelligence that
Saddam Hussein was planning to carry out terrorist
attacks against the US. The announcement was interpreted
as a sort of justification of the US-led war on Saddam,
and the Kremlin's attempt to come to Bush's aid on the
eve of the US elections.
With this
background, the strategic partnership with China may be viewed
by Russia as a way to counter US pressure, a sort of
contingency plan in the event of a Kerry victory. Talk
of a "strategic triangle", or troika, together with
China and India, could also serve this purpose.
Putin is due to visit India in December,
and the foreign ministers of India, Russia and China are
to meet at an international conference in Kazakhstan
on October 21 to discuss their bid to create a
multilateral world. The meeting on "Cooperation
and Confidence-Building in Asia", to be held in
Almaty, Kazakhstan, is part of their annual consultations.
The regular consultations among three of the world's major
nations have set off renewed speculation about the
"strategic triangle", first proposed by then Russian
prime minister Yevgeny Primakov during a visit to India
in 1998.
Russia, China and India have so far
refrained from publicly discussing, let alone endorsing,
the idea. However, since 2002 the foreign ministers of
the three countries have met regularly on the sidelines
of international conferences to strengthen cooperation.
However, despite its overtures toward China and
India, the Kremlin has been careful to avoid making the
impression that it is forming an anti-US coalition,
indicating that Russia could hardly afford anything that
could be interpreted as a consistent affront to
Washington.
Based in Moscow, Sergei
Blagov covers Russia and post-Soviet states with special
attention to Asia-related issues. He has contributed
to Asia Times Online since 1996. Between 1983
and 1997, he spent some seven years in Southeast Asia,
mainly in Vietnam. In 2001 and 2002, Nova Science Publishers,
New York, published his two books on Vietnamese
history.
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