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MOSCOW, MARCH 29, /from RIA Novosti's Pavel Shevtsov/ - Russia's public committee in support of Slobodan Milosevic condemns the UN decision to allocate $248 mln to the International Tribunal for former Yugoslavia for its activities in 2002-03. This is said in the committee's statement forwarded to RIA Novosti, signed by its chairman, Moscow State University professor, famous philosopher Alexander Zinovyev. According to the members of the committee, this step shows blatant disregard for the interests of the international community. Dozens of countries are going through a heavy economic crisis, hundreds of people need food and medical assistance. Under these circumstances,...

Friday March 29, 5:08 AM Eighteen rebels killed, 72 arrested in Chechnya Russian troops killed 18 Chechen rebels, more than half of them in air strikes, and made 72 arrests during a series of operations in the breakaway republic, Russian news agencies reported, quoting military authorities. Russian jets carried out 32 missions Thursday over the mountainous region in the southeast of the republic, killing 13 rebels, the Itar-Tass news agency said, quoting the Russian command in the North Caucasus. Five other rebels died in the past 24 hours in operations in the capital Grozny and in Chechnya's second city of...

MOSCOW - Elusive, swift-striking Chechen guerrillas have been Russia's most ferocious and resolute internal enemy for almost two centuries, and dozens of Russian troops continue to die weekly in Moscow's latest 30-month-old campaign to subdue them. Some reports say US forces may now be squaring off against the same deadly foe in Afghanistan – hundreds of Chechen fighters who have embraced Al Qaeda's global jihad. "There are a lot of them, and they sure know how to fight," an un-named US officer told Agence France-Presse after US troops clashed with Chechen guerrillas in this month's "Operation Anaconda," aimed at corralling...

Thursday March 21, 5:31 AM Large-scale sweep launched in Chechen capital Russian authorities and local police launched a large-scale sweep of Chechnya's capital Grozny after two civilians and a policeman were gunned down Wednesday, Russian news agencies reported. Russian army, interior ministry troops and FSB security service joined forces with the pro-Moscow Chechen administration and police in a bid to flush out rebel guerrilla still hiding in the city. According to officials quoted by the Interfax news agency, the sweep was planned in advance, but the killing of two women and a policeman who came to their aid earlier on...

INTELLIGENCE NEWSLETTER # 401 - 08/03/01 International Politics :  The U.S. Connection in Caucasus -----------------Ex-president Bill Clinton’s pardons-for-cash scandal is only the tip of an iceberg that reveals close connections between the Washington establishment and an international network of Russian mobsters. At the origin of the saga was the revelation by the National Enquirer that Hillary Clinton’s brother Hugh Rodham received some $400,000 for arranging last minute presidential pardons for two ex-convicts. From that starting point one can see the extent of common interests of the previous and new U.S. administrations concerning oil reserves in the Caucasus.Two years ago Hugh...

March 25, 2002 Chechens and Russians Begin New Talks By PATRICK E. TYLER OSCOW, March 24 — After more than two years of civil war in Chechnya, Russian lawmakers have opened a new dialogue with Chechen political figures in hopes of setting terms for direct talks between President Vladimir V. Putin and the rebel leaders he has branded terrorists. The opening of the informal talks in Moscow this month followed the failure of an initiative by Mr. Putin last fall to begin direct talks with Chechen leaders hiding in the northern Caucasus, where guerrilla operations against federal troops continue. Those...

The refusal by the chairman of Russia’s upper house of parliament, Sergei Mironov, to meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during his recent trip to the Middle East was the most public display yet of a shift in Russian policy toward Israel and the Jewish community at home and abroad. Whether the shift is tactical and temporary, or strategic and long-lasting, and how big a departure it marks from the past is being widely debated. The snub, however, had the paradoxical effect of making people at each extreme of the policy spectrum agree with each other. Many in the Russian...

OSCOW, March 19 — The American publishing billionaire Steve Forbes once trumpeted a flat-rate income tax so simple you could fill it out on a postcard. The Russian government recently took his advice about the flat tax to heart.But instead of a postcard, Russians are filling out 12 pages of forms.Still, Russia is reporting stellar first results from a bold experiment, a 13 percent flat-rate income tax. The centerpiece of the government's tax reform program, it is the lowest rate in all of Europe and the envy of American right-wingers.Personal income tax revenues jumped by 47 percent in 2001....

MOSCOW, March 22 (AFP) - Russia has overtaken Saudi Arabia as the world's number one oil producer for the first time since the 1980s, highlighting the potential long-term challenge the country represents to the mainly Arab oil cartel OPEC. Russia pumped 7.28 million barrels of oil a day in February, compared to Saudi Arabia's 7.19 million barrels per day, according to statistics just released by the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA). The two countries were neck and neck the month before. Russia may not hold for long onto its position at the top of the table, with the Saudi...

Moscow utility Mosenergo is threatening to cut electricity to a scientific research center that has not paid its bill in more than three years. The problem for Mosenergo, and the research center's trump card, is that it stores strains of the most deadly diseases known to mankind. Located in Obolensk some 90 kilometers to the south of Moscow, the State Center for Applied Microbiology has not paid the utility since October 1998 and now owes 43.5 million rubles ($1.4 million), Mosenergo spokes-woman Yulia Shagelman said Thursday. But the center's head, Nikolai Urakov, said he cannot pay the energy bill because...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department is investigating the relationship between the nation's leading nuclear fuel supplier and a Pittsburgh consulting business that was established by a top Russian nuclear official. Under an agreement with the U.S., Russia provides most of the uranium purchased by U.S. Enrichment Corp. of Bethesda, Md. The uranium, which supplies fuel to about 70 percent of the nation's nuclear power plants, is taken from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons, processed to be used in power plants and sent to the United States. Recent stories by the Tribune and...

March 19, 2002, 08:01 PM  TABRIYYEHIraqi Oil Minister Amer Rashid called on Russian oil firms to step up their activities in Iraq, offering the lure of billions of dollars in contracts."We call on Russian companies to invest in the development of Iraqi oil deposits. This will serve the interests of both countries," he told a press conference in Moscow.The minister explained that there were now 73 major oil deposits registered in Iraq but only 24 of them were being exploited. "Foreign companies, primarily Russian ones, have a chance to take part in the development of 49 oil deposits," Rashid said....

Caucasus: As U.S. prepares to train republic's forces in anti-terror tactics, some analysts question motives. DUISI, Georgia -- A band of Arab fighters in the mountains near this country's Pankisi Gorge have caused sufficient alarm that the United States is preparing to spend $64 million in part to help the Georgian military get rid of them. Philip Remler, a senior U.S. diplomat in Georgia, said in February that dozens of fighters from Afghanistan, including Al Qaeda members, had fled to the Caucasus in recent months. But authorities in this former Soviet republic, both local and national, dispute that contention. They...

VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia, Mar 18, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- An explosion that officials said was caused by a gas leak leveled a mosque in Chechnya's second largest city, while Russian forces pressed sweeps Monday against rebels. The overnight explosion caused no casualties but damaged neighboring buildings in Gudermes, tearing aluminum off roofs and blowing out windows, leaving just a red-brick tower of the mosque standing among the debris. Vsevolod Chernov, the chief prosecutor of the Moscow-appointed Chechen administration, said on Russia's NTV television that the blast was most likely caused by a natural gas leak. But Russian media...

The leaking of a secret report to Congress generated much misunderstanding of the nuclear weapons policies of the Bush administration. Now that Russia has firmly stated its understanding and support, maybe the panic-mongers will think again.<!ENDSUMM!> Just before Vice President Dick Cheney set off on March 7 to solicit support for overthrowing the regime in Iraq, somebody slipped the report to the Los Angeles Times. The document, drawn up in January, said the Pentagon needed new earth-penetrating nuclear warheads and bombs to reach and destroy military facilities deep underground. It named Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Libya, Russia and...

WASHINGTON — Soviet propagandists used to touch up photographs to remove the face of a Kremlin official who had fallen from favor, making him a "nonperson." The same disinformation technique is now being used to wipe out the fact of a meeting in Prague in April, 2001 — five months before the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. — between Mohamed Atta, the leading Qaeda hijacker, and Ahmed al-Ani, the Iraqi consul in Prague, who was Saddam Hussein's intelligence case officer there.On "Meet the Press" yesterday, Sergei Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister (like his boss, a former K.G.B. disinformation specialist) said...

A Northern Alliance for ChechnyaBy Dmitry Rogozin When a U.S. State Department official furtively met with a representative of Aslan Maskhadov, former leader of Chechnya, toward the end of January, he could have delivered a simple but effective message from the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush: If you want international legitimacy and respect, join the anti-terror coalition by turning the Chechen forces you claim to command into a "Northern Alliance for Chechnya." The Russian authorities are urged by many in the West to engage in political dialogue with what are called "moderate Chechen leaders," including Maskhadov. The UN...

Moscow, March 17. (PTI): Russia will ship the second batch of 40 T-90 Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) to India next month under a $ 800 million deal signed last February, Defence Industry sources said. The first batch was shipped in December last year by Nizhny Tagil-based `Uralvagonzavod' Tank Plant in Sverdlovsk region. The Indian contract will be executed on time, Sverdlovsk Governor Eduard Rossel said. Out of 310 tanks, 124 have to be supplied fully assembled to India while 86 would be in semi-knocked down and 100 in completely knocked down conditions for assembly at the Heavy Vehicles Factory at...

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov denied reports Sunday that weapons grade nuclear material is missing from Russian defense stockpiles. "Concerning weapons grade material, there is not a single case that any Russian weapons grade material has been stolen, sold or something like that," Ivanov told "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert. But Ivanov did not rule out the possibility that non-weapons grade nuclear material had been sold. "There were cases of isotopes - I think you call them isotopes - from the civilian energy sector, which some fools thought it might be presented as nuclear material and tried to sell...

By 291 votes to six, the Russian Duma yesterday accused Washington of seeking, under the guise of curbing the twin threats of international terrorism and nuclear proliferation, to “settle scores” with Iraq, Iran and North Korea. In a condemnation couched in Soviet-era rhetoric, the deputies declared that an American overthrow of any these regimes would be “an interference in the internal affairs of these states”. In this return to verbal hostilities, Russia’s MPs are not alone. Anatoli Kvavshin, the powerful and authoritarian Chief of the General Staff, recently told elite troops of the Moscow Military District that Nato still...