deniz deger's List: caucasus & central asia portal

• As with Georgia, there is the prospect of U.S. involvement. The head of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council is in Washington this week for talks. And Vice President Cheney is traveling next week to meet with leaders in both Ukraine and Georgia, visits that may embolden Russia's hard-liners. In the wake of Russia's move into Georgia, he declared that "Russian aggression must not go unanswered."
• It's not democracy when a president carries out the orders of a vice president of another country,

• Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, noting that the Arctic shelf could contain 25% of the world's hydrocarbon resources, ordered the Russian government to develop a plan to implement a newly created state policy toward development of the region. 

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              "The president approved the basic principles of the state policy in this direction, and issued an instruction to prepare by Dec. 1 a plan to implement [them] in the Arctic region," said Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia's Security Council.
  
  RSC approved Medvedev's request, saying, "The principles of Russia's state policy in the Arctic to 2020 and beyond were approved, and a plan to implement them was adopted."
  
• Medvedev said. "The use of these resources is a guarantee of Russia's energy security in general," he added.
  
• We must finalize and adopt a federal law on the southern border of Russia's Arctic zone," Medvedev said, adding, "It is our duty to our direct descendants. We have to ensure the long-term national interests of Russia in the Arctic."
  

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• “Countries that do not belong to a region do not interfere with the countries of that region,” he declared at the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit.
• Moscow, however, was still uneasy about imposing a fresh round of UN sanctions.
• For one thing, the crisis could encourage the European Union to follow the US example and impose a further raft of unilateral sanctions against Tehran.
• Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister and former president, hinted last week that co-operation over Iran hinged on the west’s talking to Russia about its own concerns. But he also made clear that Russia had backed three UN sanctions resolutions on Iran because it was in its own “national interests”.

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• The US on Wednesday warned Turkey not to strike an energy deal with Iran that undermined diplomatic efforts to halt Tehran’s nuclear programme, on the eve of a visit to Ankara by Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the Iranian president.
• Such a deal by Turkey with Iran would send the wrong message at a time when the Iranian regime has repeatedly failed to comply with its UN Security Council and IAEA obligations,” the state department said.

• Georgia has weakened its case for NATO membership,” it said. “It openly defied its main strategic patron, the US, by seeking to recover its lost territories, taking on a declared Russian interest without the ability to do so alone and then calling on the West to sort out the mess it created.”
• Europeans have a strong case to argue that it is in NATO’s strategic interest to pause its enlargement policy…Europe will want to invite the US to think strategically, not nostalgically, about the weight it wishes to attach to NATO enlargement in its regional policy

• In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr de Hoop Scheffer complained that Russia – which has pledged to withdraw from buffer zones inside Georgia that adjoin South Ossetia and Abkhazia – is being permitted to retain a military presence inside the two breakaway regions.
• “If the Russians are staying in South Ossetia with so many forces, I do not consider this as a return to the status quo,
• However, Mr de Hoop Scheffer signalled that Nato would stand by its decision to suspend regular meetings of ambassadors from Nato and Russia as long as Russian troops remained in the two breakaway regions. “A speedy revival of the Nato-Russia Council . . . will not be easy, I think.”

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• Meanwhile, ignoring Russia’s warnings, western countries rushed to recognise Kosovo’s illegal declaration of independence from Serbia. We argued consistently that it would be impossible, after that, to tell the Abkhazians and Ossetians (and dozens of other groups around the world) that what was good for the Kosovo Albanians was not good for them
• In international relations, you cannot have one rule for some and another rule for others.

• Last week Vaclav Havel, the former Czech president, put us on alert: “Russia does not really know where it begins and where it ends.

• When Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, visits the Caucasus next week, he will bring a message of support for Georgia in its struggle with Russia for control of its separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

  But during talks in both Georgia and Azerbaijan, he will express Washington’s deep concern about the vulnerability of strategic oil export routes across the Caucasus to the west in the wake of the conflict between Georgia and Russia
• But analysts said the conflict would prompt Caspian oil producers to shy away from Caucasus export routes in future.

• Oil-rich Azerbaijan has responded to the Georgian crisis by reducing its reliance on trans-Caucasus oil pipelines, increasing shipments to Russia and starting to sell crude to Iran, in moves that will raise concerns in the US and the European Union.
• but it's not good to have all your eggs in one basket, especially when the basket is very fragile," said Elhar Nasirov, the vice-president of Socar, Azerbaijan's state oil company.
• Azerbaijan has not joined the west in condemning Russian action against Georgia despite the disruption caused to the oil business.

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• The two presidents, Dmitry Medvedev and Hugo Chávez, pledged closer co-operation as Mr Chávez visited Russia for the second time in just over two months. His visit came as a fleet of Russian warships were sailing towards the Venezuelan coast for naval exercises.
• Russia also agreed this week to lend Venezuela $1bn (€682m, £540m) to buy military equipment, boosting growing arms sales that have seen Russia sell $4.4bn in weaponry to Mr Chávez’s regime between 2005 and 2007.
• The energy agreements signed on Friday included a broad memorandum calling for the creation of a joint Russian-Venezuelan consortium between PDVSA (Petroleos De Venezuela) and Russia’s Gazprom, Rosneft, TNK-BP, Surgutneftegaz and Lukoil to develop fields in Venezuela as Russia seeks access to US energy markets.
• Just hours after Mr Chávez’s visit, Mr Medvedev turned up the military rhetoric, announcing plans to build an upgraded nuclear deterrent system by 2020, including a space defence system and nuclear submarines. The plan would also bring all units to a state of constant combat readiness.

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• But in a surprise move, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, on Friday held an impromptu encounter with his counterparts at the UN in New York and gave his backing to a new Security Council resolution reasserting that Iran must suspend its uranium enrichment programme.
• Western diplomats say Russia’s decision to cancel an earlier foreign ministers’ meeting planned for Thursday was prompted by anger that the US and its allies had moved to cancel a regular session of the G8 in New York. In the aftermath of Russia’s incursion into Georgia, meetings of the G8 have been suspended until Moscow is deemed to be complying with international demands that it withdraws from Georgia.
• Earlier this year, the six powers offered Iran a refreshed package of incentives to suspend uranium enrichment, in return for which Tehran would get significant economic assistance.

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