MOSCOW FRETS OVER U.S. CAUCASUS PRESENCE;
RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE PROTECTS BAGHDAD'S SECRETS
March 26:
MOSCOW FRETS OVER U.S. CAUCASUS PRESENCE. According to the Associated Press, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has said that his government is not satisfied with U.S. explanations concerning recent reconnaissance flights. On March 22nd, two Russian fighters tracked a U-2 spy plane flying near Georgia's border with Russia. Russia's Foreign Ministry subsequently complained to the U.S. Embassy, accusing Washington of renewing a "Cold War practice." Russia cannot accept the U.S. government's explanation that the flight was part of the fight against Georgia-based terrorism, Ivanov said. A senior U.S. diplomat told AP that Washington had informed Moscow in advance about spy flights over Georgia and Azerbaijan, which, he said, could help Russia in its fight against Chechen terrorists.
March 27:
RUSSIAN HAND IN IRAQI WMD... A bioterrorism expert has claimed that Russia has been Iraq's "main supplier of the materials and know-how to weaponize anthrax, botulism and smallpox." Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Robert Goldberg cites former UN weapons inspector Richard Spertzel, who believes that Moscow supplied Baghdad with fermentation equipment to produce bio-toxins, and says that Russians on the UN inspection team in Iraq were "paranoid" about his efforts to uncover smallpox production. No country has "done more to rebuild" Saddam's chemical and biological weapons programs or "been more aggressive in helping hide the truth" than Russia, Goldberg writes.
..AND RUSSIAN FEARS OF AMERICAN ENTRAPMENT. A Russian member of the UN inspection team in Iraq, meanwhile, has asserted that the United States might fabricate evidence of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. After discussing ways that the U.S. could plant fake evidence of chemical weapons production, Kirill Scheluchenko writes in a Gazeta.ru commentary: "It is even easier to falsify biological weapons production in Iraq. The culture could be grown in the U.S. and delivered to Iraq later. And if the Americans have in their possession samples of Russian cultures and use them (in particular, Russian anthrax stems, which they most likely possess), then Russia would end up facing accusations of proliferation of biological weapons."
WASHINGTON URGES KREMLIN CRACKDOWN ON IRAQ TIES. A senior U.S. diplomat has told the Financial Times that Washington wants the Russian government to take "punitive action" against companies that transferred weapons technology to Iraq. According to the newspaper, the United States alleges that along with the transferred technology, including GPS satellite jamming equipment, "personnel from the Russian companies have been operating the equipment on the ground in Iraq."
March 28:
RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE PROTECTS BAGHDAD'S SECRETS. Russian intelligence agents are in Iraq, possibly to "evacuate" the Iraqi special services' archives before Saddam Hussein's regime falls, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports. The agents, it claims, are in daily contact with their Iraqi counterparts and are trying to preempt the CIA and Britain's MI-6, which have also sent agents into Iraq to get hold of the archives. The newspaper says that while the intelligence archives do not include weapons of mass destruction documentation, which the regime has already destroyed, they are important as a lever of influence in post-Saddam Iraq. Yevgeny Primakov, who was once Russia's foreign intelligence chief, may have discussed the archives with the Iraqi leader during a February visit to Baghdad.
March 29: PUTIN WARNS OF IRAQ WAR "CATASTROPHE." Russian President Vladimir Putin has again criticized the U.S.-led war in Iraq. In a letter to the environmental group Greenpeace, Putin said the conflict had placed the Middle East "under the threat of a large-scale humanitarian and ecological catastrophe," NEWSru.com reports. During a March 28th meeting with Russian parliamentarians, Putin called the war possibly the worst international crisis since the end of the Cold War, saying it "threatens to shake the very basis of global stability and international rights," Agence France-Presse reported.
Meanwhile, Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov was quoted on March 28th as saying he supported the U.S.-led coalition's efforts to end Saddam Hussein's "harsh dictatorship." But Maskhadov also called on Washington to prove its "fairness" by taking immediate measures to end the Chechen conflict.
- Jonas Bernstein
Copyright (c) 2003, American Foreign Policy Council
Yes and the proof is where? Thought so...speculation and ineuendo...show me the beef.