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Inside a 9/11 mastermind's interrogation
By Scott Shane
Sunday, June 22, 2008
WASHINGTON: In a makeshift prison in the north of Poland, Al Qaeda's engineer of mass murder faced off against his Central Intelligence Agency interrogator. It was 18 months after the 9/11 attacks, and the invasion of Iraq was giving Muslim extremists new motives for havoc. If anyone knew about the next plot, it was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
The interrogator, Deuce Martinez, a soft-spoken analyst who spoke no Arabic, had turned down a CIA offer to be trained in waterboarding. He chose to leave the infliction of pain and panic to others, the gung-ho paramilitary types whom the more cerebral interrogators called "knuckledraggers."
Martinez came in after the rough stuff, the ultimate good cop with the classic skills: an unimposing presence, inexhaustible patience and a willingness to listen to the gripes and musings of a pitiless killer in rambling, imperfect English. He achieved a rapport with Mohammed that astonished his fellow CIA officers.
A canny opponent, Mohammed mixed disinformation and braggadocio with details of plots, past and planned. Eventually, he grew loquacious. "They'd have long talks about religion," comparing notes on Islam and Martinez's Catholicism, one CIA officer recalled. And, the officer added, there was one other detail no one could have predicted: "He wrote poems to Deuce's wife."
Martinez, who by then had interrogated at least three other high-level prisoners, would bring Mohammed snacks, usually dates. He would listen to Mohammed's despair over the likelihood that he would never see his children again and to his catalogue of complaints about his accommodations.
Full story via active link: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/22/america/22ksm.php

Geopolitical Diary: The Saudis' Oil Game Plan
June 23, 2008 0158 GMT
The long-awaited Jeddah Oil Conference on oil supplies was held and yielded the long-expected answer. The Saudis are going to increase oil supplies by the amount floated a week ago, and are prepared to increase supplies even more if there is demand for more product, which they do not see at this time. The subtext of the meeting was simple. Oil prices are not the result of insufficient supply or extraordinary demand. Supply and demand are pretty much balanced. Therefore, $135 a barrel for oil does not represent a problem to be solved; it represents a reasonable price for crude.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the Saudi view. Making a $135 a barrel is better than making a $100 a barrel, and beats the hell out of making $50 dollars a barrel. In some cases, countries that buy oil might have non-economic leverage to use against oil producers. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the most important exporter, there is not much that can be done. On the contrary, the Saudis have the leverage.
The only country that could use political leverage against the Saudis is the United States, and at the moment the United States is more dependent on the Saudis politically than the other way around. The Saudis are critical to two major strategic U.S. initiatives: stabilizing Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian talks. The Saudis are not involved in these matters for Washington’s benefit, but Washington is benefiting. There are no non-economic threats the United States could make, assuming it would really want to bring down oil prices.
The fact is that the United States is benefiting geopolitically from higher oil prices. Certainly it is putting significant pressure on the U.S. economy, but nothing compared to the pressure being placed on China. The United States figures that while it can get cheap goods from China and elsewhere in the world, the weakening of China’s global position certainly does not cause the United States much grief. And the role the Saudis are playing in stabilizing the Middle East is also to the United States’ benefit. Relieving geopolitical pain in return for increasing economic pain sometimes makes sense. But the truth is that it really doesn’t matter what Washington thinks about higher oil prices. They are a reality, so Washington might as well get the benefits.
From Saudi Arabia’s point of view, there are three issues it must consider in determining how much oil to pump.
First, the Saudis want to maintain demand. They do not want to lead the world into a global recession, since that would reduce demand and decrease prices. They are clearly watching the global picture carefully, and we would think that what they are seeing is that any further increase in oil prices would lead to a serious recession. They are indicating that they will try to increase production so that oil prices don’t go any higher and perhaps increase production in the face of softening demand, allowing prices to go down a bit. Oil markets are acting as if this were the case, but the Saudis are too smart to pay much attention to the day-to-day fluctuation of oil markets.
Second, the Saudis have limits on what they can produce. In the short term, their productive capacity has some give in it, but it is not infinitely elastic. They need to be careful not to max out capacity. There has been much discussion of peak oil — the idea that the Saudis have peaked out in their oil supply. If that’s true, then they need to get the maximum price for every barrel produced. It could be argued that keeping prices high even in the face of global depression, if it could be done, would be the optimal long-term strategy for the Saudis. If peak oil is true, then the Saudis need to maximize the total revenue captured, not quarterly or annual revenue.
But the Saudis need to be aware of the third variable: alternative sources of oil and alternative energy supplies. The higher the price of oil goes, the more incentive there is to use previously uneconomic sources of oil and find other energy sources. This is not something the Saudis, or other oil producers, want to see happen. Over the long term, to the extent that they can control prices, the Saudis and others want the highest possible price that precludes significant investment in alternatives. That isn’t easy to calculate or to do, but it is their goal.
Thus, what the Saudis want is the highest possible price. The Riyadh conference affirmed that, but it also seemed to understand that the term “possible” is complex and flexible. If we can extract any meaning from this conference, it would appear to be that the Saudis do not want to see a major break in prices, but are probably wary of seeing the price going much higher and might prefer moderately lower prices to achieve their ends. But it is not clear to us that the Saudis really have that much control over markets, so their finely tuned wishes and reality might not be connected.
http://www.stratfor.com/

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Genghis Putin
By MICHAEL AUSLIN FROM TODAY'S WALL STREET JOURNAL ASIA

June 24, 2008
While Washington continues to fixate on Iraq, a resurgent Russia is steadily expanding its influence in Eurasia. If the next American president ignores Moscow's inroads, democratic development in Asia will come under threat and the United States may soon be faced with a strategic challenge in one of the world's most resource-rich regions.
Russia's main target of late is Mongolia, one of Asia's most vibrant democracies. Since first holding elections in 1990, Mongolia has developed a stable electoral system with more than 15 political parties and seen two peaceful handovers of power. Mongolians will vote on June 29 to elect a new parliament. Polls suggest the ruling ex-Communist Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party, which regained power in 2000, could lose power to the opposition Democratic Party.
Regardless of the election outcome, Mongolia's relationship with Moscow will take centerstage. Russia's nationalized oil company, Rosneft, supplies more than 90% of Mongolia's oil. Over the past three months, it has increased prices twice -- by an average of 20% each time. This comes on top of surging prices that, since 2006, have pushed inflation in Mongolia to over 15% annually. Rosneft recently told Mongolian officials that it would "lower" oil prices if given the rights to "run oil production" in the country. Moscow also wants to build 100 gas stations throughout the country, which would solidify its overwhelming presence there and reduce consumers' energy choices even further.
Similar tactics are afoot in other sectors of Mongolia's economy. Russian enterprises already own 49% of Mongolia's national railway and its largest copper and gold mining companies. An industrial group founded by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants to consolidate the Russian-controlled shares of all three companies, effectively giving Mr. Putin's cronies a near-stranglehold on key players in the Mongolian economy. Officially, Mongolian officials express confidence in the benefits of deeper economic relations with Russia. Privately, they admit to feeling pressured into opening up their markets to Moscow, and wish more Western companies would invest.
Despite these misgivings, Mongolian president Nambaryn Enkhbayar visited Moscow last month and agreed to discuss further joint uranium production and nuclear cooperation. New Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated that bilateral trade will soon exceed $1 billion, cementing Russia's position as Mongolia's largest trading partner after China. If these trends continue, Mongolia may become an economic satellite of Mr. Putin's newly expansive Russia.
The stakes are high for fledgling Asian states, especially democracies, which must balance satisfying Russian demands with proving to their own people that they can protect their independence. If Russia succeeds in blackmailing Mongolia into economic subservience, then it can try to extend this tactic to other Central Asian nations.
Imagine the precedent that would set. China could also decide that painstaking negotiations and diplomacy are a waste of time when it can bring its export and import power to bear. Democratic Japan and South Korea could feel greater pressure to join exclusive trading blocs led by authoritarian regimes. Finally, Mongolia and other states might be asked to make strategic concessions to Russian security forces to "protect" Moscow's investments. In this way, Russia could gain new opportunities to expand its military footprint beyond its own borders.
What can Washington do? First, we must encourage greater U.S. trade with Mongolia. Total trade stood at about $120 million in 2007. We should push beyond our 2004 Trade and Investment Framework Agreement and start negotiations for a full free trade agreement. In addition, the U.S. government-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation should increase its outlay for infrastructure projects in Mongolia far beyond the current total level of $285 million. Mongolians can also help themselves in this regard: Lingering governance problems partly account for slack Western investment.
Second, we should marshal global opinion against Russia's strong-arm tactics and condemn exclusive economic arrangements. Developing states must be assured that no economic leverage will be used against them to secure unfair advantages. So far, the U.S. and other democracies in Asia have stood silently by as Russia has stepped up its bullying of Mongolia.
Third, America can push forward with the Asia-Pacific Democracy Partnership project proposed by President Bush at the 2007 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, and unite Asia's free nations to support democratic values and assist states building liberal systems. Mongolia should feel that the U.S. is committed to linking up democratic nations in the region and addressing common concerns, be they economic or strategic in nature.
Finally, the U.S. and Mongolia can deepen their impressive security cooperation, which includes joint training and peace-keeping exercises. Even without a formal security relationship with the U.S., Mongolia has built a training center for peacekeeping operations and dispatched nearly 200 troops to Iraq. For a young democracy, Mongolia has shown a welcome willingness to look beyond its borders and play a constructive role in the world. When President Bush visited Mongolia in November 2005, he called Mongolia a "brother in the cause of freedom." Now is the time for the U.S. to help protect that freedom from economic and political threats alike.
Mr. Auslin is a resident scholar in Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal1.
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URL for this article:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121425497342197899.html


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In Lithuania, Better Hide That Hammer and Sickle
By Sara Rhodin
MOSCOW — Even this many decades later, the legacy of World War II still arouses tensions in Eastern Europe. Consider the latest row between Russia and its Baltic neighbors.
Lithuania, a former Soviet republic, approved a law last week that bars the public display of Soviet symbols. In what the BBC referred to as the toughest such measure in the former Soviet Union, Lithuania also outlawed the playing of the Soviet national anthem and the public display of photos of high-ranking Soviet officials.
No matter that Lithuania’s law also covered the symbols and icons of Nazi Germany -– Russia quickly took offense at the law anyway. In Moscow, officials declared that the measure was an insult to the Soviet soldiers who defeated the Nazis.
On Sunday, Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, issued a statement that condemned “any attempt at the rewriting of history and the revising of the results of World War II.” He was joined by the president of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko.
A spokesman for the Kremlin told Reuters that the statement was directed toward Lithuania, the other two Baltic states –- Latvia and Estonia — and Ukraine.
Such disputes have repeatedly flared since the Soviet Union’s fall. Last year, when Estonia relocated a statue of a Red Army soldier out of the center of its capital, Tallinn, there were public disturbances in Tallinn and Moscow and accusations of “blasphemy” from the Kremlin. The crisis culminated in a series of cyber-attacks against web sites in Estonia.
Russians viewed the monument as a tribute to their countrymen who fought and died to free Estonia from German occupation. Many Estonians, however, remember that Soviet troops invaded what had been independent Estonia before the Germans did, and see the monument as a symbol of a half-century of Soviet occupation after the war.
Relations have also grown tense over the rights of the Russian-speaking minorities in Latvia and Estonia. Inability to speak their countries’ primary languages fluently has kept many Russian speakers from qualifying for citizenship after independence.
Last week, President Medvedev announced that such so-called stateless Russian speakers in the Baltics would be allowed to enter Russia without a visa. Estonia responded by asserting that Russia was trying to meddle in Estonia’s efforts to integrate these people into the nation’s social fabric.
New York Times: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/in-lithuania-better-hide-that-hammer-and-sickle/?ref=europe
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Putin’s Russia: Freedom of Fear
By Dmitry SidorovFrontPageMagazine.com 6/23/2008
Mel Brooks was right: It’s good to be the king. And it’s even better if you rule a country full of metals, diamonds, oil, and gas. But the size of the country matters as well as its history. The first tells you how much is up for grabs. The second suggests a strategy to keep the population calm and controlled. On both counts, Vladimir Putin has every reason to be a very happy man.
Publicly, bureaucrats in Russia call him Vladimir Vladimirovich. This is not just because all Russian men have middle names ending in -vich, but to show the utmost respect, emphasize their subordinate position, and demonstrate their fear of angering the Ruler.
We know Putin is King – or Tsar, or, in his current position, prime minister -- from the thunder and lighting he and his Kremlin associates have hurled at their own erstwhile comrades. This is how the King keeps his court on good behavior. As the Russian saying goes: Beat your own so that others will fear you.
Last year, according to stories told in hushed tones in Moscow, Vladimir Putin ordered a Russian general to conduct a quiet investigation of the FSB’s (former KGB’s) Economic Crimes Department. Within months, the general found himself behind bars by presidential mandate. The lesson was clear for both the FSB and the general’s men – the king has something on everyone.
This Byzantine approach extends beyond the king’s immediate entourage. The intelligentsia, even though it was among the first to hail the new chief, from time to time feels the grip of the Tsar. Not long ago, a well-known Russian director celebrated his birthday with a group of local celebrities in a Moscow restaurant. One of his friends, a noted tippler, had knocked back more than a few by the time Vladimir Putin joined the festivities.
The tipsy gentleman, as the story was told, stood up and walked over to the Tsar. “You should do something about traffic jams in Moscow that your movements around the city cause,” he said. “When your motorcade is on the way to or from the Kremlin, the police stop traffic for two or more hours, making it impossible for people,” the brave man greeted Mr. Putin.
As the President listened to this litany of complaint, another gentleman, a famous actor, passed by. Hearing part of the conversation, he turned to Mr. Putin and said loudly: “You should confess, Vladimir Vladimirovich.”
I don’t know whether the last line was a joke or a suggestion, but a movie director tried to strangle the actor that same night after the president left. The actor survived, but he was put on a stop list by the Russian TV for a month or so.
This story reminded me of a misfortune that befell the famous Russian poet and singer, Alexander Gorodnitsky. He was blacklisted during the Soviet times for an innocent song, “The French Ambassador’s wife.” The communist leadership decided that he might be willing to defect if allowed to travel because he sang about falling in love with the imaginary spouse of an equally imaginary French Ambassador.
The impact of Vladimir Putin’s rules of the game on business has been much graver. In the best-known case, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former owner of the oil company YUKOS, is now serving 10-year prison term in the God-forsaken city of Chita in the Russian Far East.
There is still disagreement in the West and in Russia about why Mr. Putin and his comrades went after Mr. Khodorkovsky. A majority of experts presume that the main problem was Khodorkovsky’s active involvement in politics, and his desire for independence from the President’s team. Many have said the mogul financed both the ruling and the opposition parties, endangering the balance created by the Tsar.
This sounds right, but I think that greed also played a significant role in the Kremlin’s decision making process. In 2003, when Mr. Khodorkovsky was still the head of Yukos, he was negotiating a merger with Exxon Mobile. If it had happened, the merger would have created the second-largest oil company in the world, something capable of undermining Mr. Putin’s power. Thus, the Kremlin decided to strip Khodorkovsky of his company, at the same time calculating that the proceeds from YUKOS oil exports would be enough for them to share without Exxon Mobil.
The path chosen by the Kremlin was painful for the President of YUKOS, but presumably profitable for the Tsar’s inner circle, one Russian source told me few years ago. Although there is no evidence of Putin’s direct involvement in the ensuing scam, it was the King himself who made confusing announcements about the fate of Khodorkovsky and YUKOS at the height of the conflict. His statements sent the company’s shares skittering up and down, presumably enabling knowledgeable people to make tens of millions of dollars.
The Russian business community quickly got the message and started to line up to show their support for the Tsar. Earlier this year, one prominent and very pro-Putin mogul managed to have a meeting with the President. After it was over, Mr. Putin’s “servants” told him that the President was very unhappy with his behavior. But why, asked the oligarch as goose bumps rose. He saw an attempt to be independent in your presentation, the answer came, and you should give this serious thought.
The Khodorkovsky case was the turning point of Mr. Putin’s presidency, a major victory that enabled him to stave off significant internal obstacles. It set the path for Russia to walk while he assumed the premiership, anointing the weak Medvedev to be the new President of Russia under the watchful eyes of Mr. Putin’s comrades still on the Kremlin team.
The Russian anecdote to prove the point has a waiter in a Moscow restaurant asking Putin and Medvedev what they would like to have for dinner. “I’ll have steak,” the Tsar responds. “And the vegetable?” the waiter inquires. “The vegetable will have steak, too,” Putin says quickly, nodding his successor.
It cost Mr. Putin enormous efforts to achieve such amazing results during only two presidential terms. “For eight years I worked like a galley slave, from dusk till dawn… I’m satisfied with the results of my work,” he was not too shy to admit at his last press-conference as the president of Russia on February 14, 2008.
He has every reason to be proud. In those eight years he became the King of Bureaucracy, overseeing an unprecedented expansion of officialdom even as he complained about the size and ineffectiveness of this ever-growing group of money-sucking clerks.
“Vasily Piskayrov, a senior official at the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General's office, has said that corrupt officials siphon off close to a third of the government's annual budget,” Forbes Magazine reported on June 6, 2008 quoting the Russian wire agency Interfax. According to Forbes: “that’s almost $120 billion, using the $376 billion set aside for 2008.” Mr. Putin likes the way the population treats him. Despite all their problems and hardships, the majority of people like him, no matter what he does. They believe in the Great Russia slogan the Tsar’s team has offered for their consumption, though the centuries have so tired them that they don’t seem to understand that they will never see it if current trends continue.
Since 2000 when Mr. Putin came to power, he was, and still is, in charge of the 6,5-million-square-mile country with a rapidly diminishing population and vast energy and mineral resources. According to the 2002 Russian Census, the population of the country was 145,166,731, and overwhelmingly concentrated in the Western European part of Russia. By 2008, the number of citizens came down to 142,008,838, based on data made public by the Russian State Statistics Service. If the pattern continues, in 60 years it will be difficult to find somebody responding in Russian to a phone call coming from Moscow to a place beyond the Ural Mountains, assuming there is a land line or cell connection.
Whatever programs were announced to overturn the situation have failed as a result of incompetence and stealing. The same fate, incidentally, befell the so-called national projects Mr. Medvedev was in charge of while he was deputy prime-minister of Russia. Centuries-long incompetence and stealing are two major problems afflicting Russian bureaucrats and the Kremlin itself. The other two, as Russian literary wisdom would have it, are “fools and roads,” a quotation attributed to various 17th- and 18th-century Russian writers.
Still, it’s good to be a King, even if your nation is shrinking in size and drowning in corruption. After me the deluge (“Apres Moi le deluge!”) Louis XVI once said sharing centuries old wisdom with present and future generations of Royal and self perceived royal colleagues in power.

http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Printable.aspx?GUID=1CB81AAA-7C75-4843-B443-8CEC7D6CC318
Dmitry Sidorov is the Washington D.C. Bureau Chief of Kommersant Publishing.

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Raiders of the Russian billions
Successful companies are bankrupted, sold off and their staff sacked after financial attacks by gangs who seem above the law
Luke Harding in Moscow
The Guardian,
Tuesday June 24, 2008
Article history
For 10 years Alexei Kurkov worked at a small factory in Moscow making fire-safety equipment. One morning in November 2004 he turned up to work as usual. The doors were locked.
Overnight, his company, Specialist Electrical Equipment, had been taken over. Its new owner was a mysterious firm registered in the British Virgin Islands. The owner promptly sacked all staff. The company's valuable property in Moscow was sold off.
"It was as if we had never existed," Kurkov said. "We took the case to court. But the judge said there was no proof we had worked there.
"Fictional employees had taken our place. We had been replaced by Dead Souls," he said - referring to the Nikolai Gogol novel where dead serfs are included in landowners' accounts.
Kurkov and his co-workers had fallen victim to raiders - criminal gangs who with the assistance of corrupt bureaucrats, policemen and judges have seized assets worth billions of pounds.
In the west, corporate raiders legally take over weak or struggling firms. In Russia, raiders target healthy or successful businesses - bankrupting them artificially and transferring ownership to dubious offshore shell companies.
Last week even BP's chairman Peter Sutherland used the word raiding. BP's Russian partners were trying to seize control of TNK-BP, their troubled joint venture, using dubious 1990s "corporate raiding" practices, he said.
The problem is most acute in Moscow. Raiders working with the connivance of local officials have recently bankrupted Moscow's planetarium - and are threatening two historic houses belonging to artists and sculptors.
Other acquisitions have a surreal flavour. In Kazan, raiders have attacked a firm making orthopaedic legs. And in the Siberian town of Omsk a criminal gang has tried to take over the tank factory. Victims have included river ports and nuclear science institutes.
Rule of law
Dmitry Medvedev - Russia's president - has pledged to wipe out raiding, known by Russians as reiderstvo. Medvedev, a former St Petersburg lawyer, has made it clear he wants to end bureaucratic corruption and what he calls Russia's "legal nihilism". In a speech this month, he suggested that establishing the rule of law was his most urgent task as president. "Our job is to create absolutely independent modern courts," he declared.
Questions remain about whether Medvedev can deliver judicial reform - assuming, that is, he wants to. In the Putin era, the Kremlin famously used the courts to punish its political enemies. Judges unfailingly gave the verdict the state wanted. Individuals who displeased the Kremlin found the law applied to them with pedantic vigour. Favoured defendants didn't need to turn up. What counted wasn't the law but the person it was applied to.
Analysts are sceptical that Medvedev can curb the Kremlin's meddling in judicial affairs. "Russian leaders have been talking about legal reform since the time of Ivan the Terrible," Mikhail Delyagin, the head of Moscow's Institute for Global Problems, told the Guardian. "Putin also talked repeatedly about reform, but the results were the opposite of what he declared. Maybe Medvedev will succeed. But I doubt that Putin's loyal apprentice would wish to correct his master's actions.
"We shouldn't forget that Medvedev was Putin's main lawyer. It was Medvedev who wrote the laws ramping up pressure on the opposition and who ruled out the possibility of legal opposition activity in Russia."
Experts estimate that there are 70,000 cases of raiding in Russia a year - most of them instigated by corrupt senior officials. The standard method is for a company to be hit by a large invented tax bill. The owner is then arrested. While the owner is in prison, raiders using forged documents and shareholder protocols sell the bankrupted company to another firm. By the time the owner emerges the business has been re-sold numerous times.
Yesterday one raider, speaking anonymously, said the profits from raiding were enormous. "It costs around $120,000-$170,000 [£60,000-£85,000] to bankrupt an average company. But you can then make $3-4m profit."
Typically, raiders bribe officials in Russia's equivalent of Companies' House as well as bureaucrats in the agency for property registration and the bureau of land management, he said.
"Basically raiding is robbing. The people who do it are educated and well dressed. They drive good cars. Most importantly, they have a calm head. They already have money but want more." Asked whether he felt guilty, he said: "I feel sorry for the victims."
Cops as robbers
The primary target of the raiders is property. Office rental space in central Moscow costs £1,250 a square metre a year - the second most expensive in the world after the West End of London. In extreme cases, police have been known to arrest owners and release them only after they have signed over property to raiders.
According to researchers, only a handful of cases ever make it to court - a fact that suggests the widespread complicity of law-enforcement agencies and the FSB, Russia's post-Soviet spy agency. The agency is supposed to battle economic crime.
Asked why officials did not intervene, Valeria Filimonova of Moscow's centre for political technologies said: "They are the ones who order the raiders' attacks." They included senior members of the administration, she admitted.
In a recent report, the head of the centre, Igor Bunin, went further. Illegal raids had become "the main problem afflicting the country's economy", he said. His report lists several other recent victims of raiding: Arbat Prestige - Russia's biggest cosmetics chain; an ammonia factory; and Moscow's Domodedovo airport.
Kurkov's woes did not end when his company in the south Moscow suburb of Yasenevo was taken over. The white square building surrounded by 1960s apartment blocks and children's playgrounds now belongs to an internet firm.
Kurkov joined the company in 1995, when it employed about 2,000 people. By 2004 the workforce had shrunk to 100. Its chief accountant then seized the firm with help from a gang of professional raiders, Kurkov says. She refused to pay employees their wages and failed to return their workbooks, necessary to obtain a full pension.
Kurkov and 14 colleagues went to court. But the accountant produced documents showing he had never worked there. The judge mysteriously agreed. "I don't want to say the judge was bribed," Kurkov said. "But what other conclusion could I come to?"
Kurkov said that he had approached unions for help and complained to various ministries. In March, just before the presidential election, he even wrote to Medvedev. His quest for justice got nowhere. Medvedev's office wrote back telling him to get in touch with prosecutors. But prosecutors weren't interested, he said. "Nobody wanted to know. I believe Medvedev is doing his best. But I personify legal nihilism."
Now 68 and retired, Kurkov survives on 5,000 roubles (£110) a month. This is despite the fact that in Soviet times he received a hero of labour medal, for his productivity.
He estimates the shadowy raiders made off with around £15m. "This kind of injustice would have been impossible in the Soviet Union," he said. "In the Soviet Union I was somebody. Now I'm nobody."
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This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday June 24 2008 on p25 of the Financial section. It was last updated at 01:12 on June 24 2008.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/24/russia.internationalcrime/print

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Putin, Tymoshenko to meet on June 28


24/06/2008 18:18 MOSCOW, June 24 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's premier and his Ukrainian counterpart will meet in Moscow on June 28 to discuss energy cooperation, NATO enlargement and Russia's Black Sea Fleet, a Russian government spokesman said Tuesday.
Vladimir Putin and Yulia Tymoshenko last met in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, in late May, when they announced their countries' readiness to launch talks on a strategic agreement for Russian natural gas supplies to Ukraine.
"During negotiations involving the heads of a number of ministries and departments from Russia and Ukraine, [the premiers] are expected to discuss bilateral cooperation in key areas, such as energy, transport, aircraft building, space, the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and others," the spokesman said.
"Pressing issues, concerning NATO expansion plans, will not be left out either. Certain aspects of the implementation of basic agreements on the Black Sea Fleet are also expected to be considered," he added.
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vasyl Kirilich said earlier Tuesday that Russia's Black Sea Fleet would have to leave its base in Sevastopol by May 29, 2017.
There have recently been frequent disputes between Russia and Ukraine over the lease of the Sevastopol base. Some senior Russian officials have controversially questioned the status of the port city, transferred from Russia to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet era.
Moscow also staunchly opposes Kiev's NATO membership plans. Ukraine's pro-Western leadership has been pursuing NATO membership since 2004, when President Viktor Yushchenko came to power. Ukraine failed to secure an agreement on a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP), a key step toward joining the alliance, at the organization's summit in April, but was told the decision would be reviewed in December.





Stalin meant to lure U.S. into Korean War
June 25, 2008


A U.S. veteran cries yesterday while viewing names engraved at the War Memorial in Seoul of fellow soldiers who fell during the Korean War, which broke out on June 25, 1950, 58 years ago today. [YONHAP]
WASHINGTON - The Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had tried to draw the United States and China into the Korean War, according to a letter he wrote to the president of Czechoslovakia at the time, Klement Gottwald. The letter was brought to light by Kim Dong-il, a Korean history professor at Beijing University. In a paper that Kim wrote based on Stalin’s letters, he asserted that Washington’s massive aid to Western European countries after World War II under the Marshall Plan was beginning to destabilize many Eastern European countries. “Stalin needed to defuse this by diverting U.S. attention to the Korean War instead,” Kim said. “Otherwise, Russia would have spent enormous amounts of money to aid Eastern European countries in order to compete against the United States.”Stalin’s letter to Gottwald sharply contradicts the widespread belief that Stalin had vehemently opposed North Korea’s plans to wage war because he feared it would give the U.S. an excuse to gain a foothold on the Korean Peninsula. “Let’s think about the results if the U.S. government continues intervening in the Korean War and China also ends up embroiled in the Korean Peninsula,” Stalin wrote in the letter on Aug. 27, 1950, two months after the war broke out. “It will gain us time to strengthen socialism in Europe and will also benefit us in international political dynamics.” The Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950. The Soviet Union refused to vote at a United Nations Security Council session in early July of that year and as a result, UNSC member countries were able to reach a unanimous decision to send UN forces to defend South Korea. In response to a question from Gottwald about why he didn’t veto the proposal, Stalin said he intentionally abstained from voting “to help the U.S. get UN Security Council approval to send troops more easily.” By Lee Yong-jong JoongAng Ilbo [hawon@joongang.co.kr]






Russian-German Baltic gas pipeline ready by late 2011
Published: 24 Jun 08 16:17 CETOnline: http://www.thelocal.de/12685/
The Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea should be operational by late 2011, the head of German energy giant EON Ruhrgas said here Tuesday.
"The partners in the project are convinced that it will be functioning by autumn 2011," EON Ruhrgaz chief executive Bernhard Reutersberg said in an Interfax news agency report.Reutersberg acknowledged, according to Interfax, that there had been unexpected problems with the pipeline regarding clearance from transit countries, several of which have opposed the project.The Baltic states and Poland have objected to Nord Stream, concerned at being bypassed by a major Russian gas supply route to Europe, which dependsheavily on Russia for energy.The Nord Stream consortium is led by Russia's Gazprom, with 51 percent, while EON Ruhrgas and Wintershall Holding have 20 percent each and Holland's Gasunie owns nine percent.Earlier this month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel championed the project, which besides angering eastern European states has worried environmental groups."I will promote this project, which is in the interest of many countries," Merkel said after talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Berlin."I will strive to overcome all objections," she added.
AFP (news@thelocal.de)




Baltic Sea gasps for air as marine dead zones spread: WWF
by Staff WritersStockholm (AFP) June 23, 2008The World Wildlife Fund cautioned Monday that the spread of so-called marine dead zones, where nothing can survive due to lack of oxygen, could cause the Baltic Sea ecosystem to collapse.
"In the Baltic Sea, the marine dead zones could cause a total collapse of the entire ecosystem if their spread is permitted to continue," head of the WWF's Swedish branch Lasse Gustavsson said in a statement.
Ironically, marine areas are drained of life when they receive excess nutrients, mainly nitrogen and phosphorus from agriculture and other runoff, that act as fertilisers and enhance plant growth.
When the excess algae and other organisms die and sink to the bottom, they are decomposed by bacteria that suck up all the available oxygen, in a process called eutrophication.
Since 1995, the number of such dead zones around the world have soared from 44 to 169, according to WWF.
Around the world last year "marine dead zones covered an area double the size of arable land in Sweden, or 70,000 square kilometres (27,000 square miles)," the group said, citing data from the World Resources Institute.
Of the world's 10 largest marine dead zones, seven are according to WWF located in the Baltic Sea, which has long been considered to be on the verge of environmental catastrophe.
The semi-enclosed Baltic, which was in 2004 designated as a Particularly Sensitive Sea Area, takes far longer than many other large bodies of water to flush out toxic and other harmful substances.
"WWF demands quick and decisive action to reduce emissions, not least from agriculture around the Baltic Sea," the statement said.
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Baltic_Sea_gasps_for_air_as_marine_dead_zones_spread_WWF_999.html



Italy's Saipem signs ¤1 billion contract with Nord Stream to lay gas pipeline under Baltic Sea
2008-06-24 11:30:08 -
ROME (AP) - Italy's Saipem said Tuesday it has signed a contract with Russian-controlled Nord Stream AG to lay a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea _ a project that has raised environmental and security concerns from several countries.Under the deal, which is worth more than 1¤ billion (US$1.55 billion), Saipem will begin laying the first line of the twin Nord Stream pipeline in early 2010 and complete it in the first half of 2011, the company said in a statement.The laying of the second line is scheduled for 2011 and 2012. Two pipe-laying vessels will be used for the job, the company said.Saipem said it is also in negotiations with Nord Stream AG, the pipeline's owner, for other contracts, including shore approaches, tie-ins, rock dumping and testing.Saipem is 43 percent owned by Italian oil and gas giant Eni SpA and is a leader in providing services and engineering to the oil and gas industry.The planned pipeline would carry gas from the northwestern Russian port of Vyborg to the northern German port of Greifswald, bypassing current land routes through Poland, Belarus and Ukraine.Though EU officials have defended the project, it has provoked strong opposition in Poland, which gets transit fees from Russian gas crossing its territory.Some other countries on the Baltic Sea worry that the pipeline poses a major risk to the environment and that Russian activity in their territorial waters could compromise military security.Nord Stream AG _ controlled by Russia's state gas monopoly OAO Gazprom _ has said the project is environmentally sound and that it has commissioned independent environmental studies.The project is a joint venture between Gazprom and German companies BASF AG and E.On AG. Dutch gas company Gasunie signed a deal to join the project with a 9 percent stake.
http://www.pr-inside.com/print660941.htm
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Latvians mark Midsummer with theater classics
WATCH VIDEO
Source: CCTV.com
06-24-2008 10:19
In virtually all cultures, Midsummer remains a special time for celebration. In northern Europe, residents of Latvia jump over bonfires and stay awake until after sunrise.
In virtually all cultures, Midsummer remains a special time forcelebration. In northern Europe, residents of Latvia jump over bonfires and stay awake until after sunrise.(Photo: CCTV.com)
There is another essential element to the festivities: the performance of a 20th century Latvian play called "Tailor Days in Silmaci". The work was written in 1902, by one of Latvia's best known playwrights and novelists, Rudolfs Blaumanis. It became the country's most widely performed play.
At a National Theatre performance in Riga each year, tickets are sold out. Hundreds of people flock through turn styles decorated for the occasion with birch-boughs. The story involves three star-crossed couples whose complicated relationships are resolved by the play's conclusion with wedding bells.
"Tailor Days in Silmaci" has been staged more than 50 times in 100 years. That makes it the most frequently performed play in Latvia's history.

Editor:Liu Fang