Page 3 of
3 A massive wrench thrown in Putin's
works By M K Bhadrakumar
through Bulgaria, Romania and
Hungary to Austria, with a capacity of 30-35bcm
annually. European banks, especially the European
Investment Bank and the European Bank of
Reconstruction and Development, will fund the
project, estimated to cost 5 billion euros (US$7.1
billion).
Parallel to US diplomatic
efforts in Ashgabat, the EU has also begun working
on the Turkmen leadership. There is a new sense of
urgency in Brussels as the EU seems to have
concluded that
any
effort to break dependence on Russian supplies
will have to begin with Ashgabat.
Immediately after the Budapest conference,
Austrian Economics Minister Martin Bartenstein
visited Ashgabat. (Austria has a pivotal role in
the Nabucco project.) Berdimukhamedov told
Bartenstein that Turkmenistan has "multiple
vectors in its energy policy and in creating
alternative energy export routes, including in the
southern direction through the Caspian Sea, it is
prepared to deliver natural gas to European
countries". In other words, he put on record
Ashgabat's keenness to export its gas directly to
the European market without the Russian
intermediary.
At the same time, British
Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks also visited
Ashgabat. (Wicks is the first cabinet minister
from Britain to visit Turkmenistan in the past
nine years.) His visit followed a high-powered BP
delegation, which held discussions in the Turkmen
capital. Wicks took up the trans-Caspian pipeline
project (Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey route) with
Berdimukhamedov. He said this feeder pipeline for
Nabucco would be of "special importance" to the
EU, which would fund the project.
Wicks
told the media later that Moscow is butting into
Ashgabat's energy policy. He said, "The right to
decide on this matter is Turkmenistan's and
Azerbaijan's, and nobody else's. Oil and gas
issues are not just energy issues; they are
national-security issues for many countries. The
EU's cooperation with the countries in the
[Caspian] region should be seen through the prism
of energy security and national security of all
the states involved in these projects."
Most important, Wicks offered to
Berdimukhamedov that if Turkmenistan sold its gas
directly to the European market, it would be paid
at the rate of the prevailing market price rather
than the discounted price at which Russia buys
Turkmen gas for re-export to Europe.
At
the same time, the EU has also shifted gear in
curbing Gazprom's expansion into European markets.
On September 19, the European Commission (EC)
adopted a plan that virtually aims at preventing
Gazprom from buying pipeline networks in the EU.
While the plan has to travel a long way to become
fully fledged legislation, and there are question
marks about the efficacy of its implementation, it
is clear that the EU is deliberately erecting a
new barrier between it and Russia.
This
goes beyond a mere energy issue. The Wall Street
Journal wrote, "How to handle Russia ... has been
one of the bloc's most divisive foreign policy
issues in recent years ... [The proposal] reflects
an evolution in attitudes that has seen EU
countries that once firmly supported Moscow change
their tone."
The daily added, "This is
partly the result of changes in EU leadership,
which has seen close friends of Russia such as
former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder,
Italy's Silvio Berlusconi and France's Jacques
Chirac replaced. Russia's actions are also
responsible for the change ... [Moscow's]
willingness to use energy supply as a weapon of
foreign policy spooked and angered European
leaders."
Clearly, a sort of
"trans-Atlantic solidarity" is forming in Brussels
on energy dialogue with Russia. This has obvious
political and strategic overtones. More and more
European countries are accepting Washington's
demarche that the West must speak with one voice
in relations with Russia.
Brussels is in
effect demanding that Moscow choose between
controlling transmission networks in Europe and
remaining a supplier of energy. But the idea goes
beyond that. EC President Jose Manuel Barroso told
the media, "We need to place tough conditions on
ownerships of assets by non-European companies to
make sure we all play by the same rules." In
actual terms, Barroso demanded that the Kremlin
should give European oil companies the chance to
buy assets in Russia if Gazprom wanted to buy in
the EU.
But Moscow sees reciprocity in a
different way. The Kremlin asserts that state
control over Russia's energy reserves is not
something unique to Putin's Russia. It says the
situation is the same in France or Norway, for
example. The influential chairman of the Russian
Duma's (parliament's) international affairs
committee, Konstantin Kosachev, warned that Russia
would retaliate. "We shall have to restrict our
foreign partners' access to the corresponding
strategic industries of the Russian economy to the
same extent we are denied access to certain
branches of the west European free-market
economies," he said in Moscow on September 19.
He stressed, "Nobody should expect Russia
will display endless philanthropy and
unremittingly sacrifice its national interests for
the sake of preserving an illusion of partnership.
This will never happen."
The blasts of the
new cold war have begun blowing across the oil and
gas fields of the Caspian region. History is
repeating itself. It was over control of the
fabulous Baku oilfields that a concerted Western
military intervention took place at the time of
the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The "Baku
Commissars" of the Red Army, who resisted, became
the stuff of Soviet folklore. And in World War II
Adolf Hitler committed his Panzer divisions in a
desperate drive to seize control of the Baku
fields.
The blasts beginning to blow
across the Caspian region threaten to be every bit
as unpredictable as the turbulence triggered by
the US missile-defense controversy and the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization's continued expansion
into the territories of the former Soviet Union.
Caspian summit in Tehran Thus
as Caspian leaders assemble in Tehran for their
summit in about two weeks' time, a huge East-West
divide has appeared, which seemed improbable even
six months ago. Putin arrives in Tehran on October
16 on his first visit to Iran. At stake are
several tense issues.
Putin will want to
hear from Berdimukhamedov what is going on in the
complicated Turkmen mind. He will look forward to
hearing from Berdimukhamedov, fresh from his visit
to the US, that Ashgabat is still committed to the
May agreements on quadripartite energy cooperation
involving Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and
Turkmenistan.
Certainly, Putin won't be
pleased with a legacy that in the closing months
of his presidency, middle-level US diplomats and
oil executives might have stumped him in Russia's
Central Asian backyard. Moscow will pull out all
the stops to prevent this. Admittedly, Moscow has
much leverage and Ashgabat will be aware of the
perils of brazen independence from Russian
influence.
Meanwhile, China too will be
closely watching for signs if Berdimukhamedov
intends to fulfill the commitments he made in
Beijing during his July visit. If Berdimukhamedov
decides to opt for the latest Western packages on
the trans-Caspian pipeline, Turkmenistan's
cooperation with China may suffer. That would
raise doubts about the prospects of China
receiving 30bcm of Turkmen gas annually for the
next 30 years.
As regards Tehran, it will
try to persuade Berdimukhamedov that consorting
with the US might not prove to be for his own good
in the medium and long terms. Azerbaijani
President Ilham Aliyev, on the contrary, will
encourage Berdimukhamedov to continue undeterred
and instead move along the track of the
trans-Caspian pipeline project.
One thing
is certain. Settlement of the Caspian Sea's status
will remain postponed, as the present differences
among the littoral states preclude the possibility
of major trans-Caspian projects of the sort that
the EU and the US espouse - and that suits Russia
and Iran.
Of overarching importance will
be the impact of all this on Russia-Iran
relations. The two countries share common concerns
over Ashgabat's energy policy in the coming months
as well as on Caspian Sea issues. Russian-Iranian
convergence of interests on regional issues has
once again surged to the forefront. A question
remains: How will this geopolitical reality
influence Moscow's policy at a time Washington is
hoping to isolate Iran?
Of course, if
Washington succeeds in effecting Turkmenistan's
"defection", that will constitute a severe setback
for Russia's regional interests. The Central Asian
states, especially Kazakhstan, will draw their own
conclusions, which in turn could impact on
Commonwealth of Independent States integration.
It may be twilight in the White House in
Washington. A highly controversial era may be
coming to a close. Bush's friends may be beginning
to desert him. Der Spiegel wrote this week, "Sixty
corporate CEOs [chief executive officers] who had
previously donated primarily to the Bush campaigns
- including John Mack of Morgan Stanley, Rupert
Murdoch of News Corporation and Terry Semel of
Yahoo - are now giving more money to the Democrats
... It is all too apparent that the political
energy is seeping out of the West Wing of the
White House."
But Der Spiegel's list of
the 60 renegade US corporate giants cannot include
the oil majors. Cheney and Rice have just about
ensured that.
M K Bhadrakumar
served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign
Service for more than 29 years, with postings
including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and
to Turkey (1998-2001).
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