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NATO Chief Says He’d Consider Brzezinski Plea for Russia Accord

By James G. Neuger

Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) — NATO said it would consider a proposal by former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to tighten security arrangements with a Russian-led defense alliance to ease East-West tensions.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he has an “open mind” toward ideas to soothe the strains between the former Cold War adversaries that peaked with Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, a would-be NATO member.

“We have to look closer into the possibilities of improving confidence between Russia and NATO,” Rasmussen said in an interview at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels yesterday. “I am prepared to look upon all ideas that serve confidence-building with an open mind.”

Western governments are courting Russian help in securing supply lines for the 100,000 allied troops in Afghanistan, stemming the spread of nuclear weapons and in combating piracy off the coast of Somalia.

Writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, Brzezinski called for a pact with the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, a seven-nation group cobbled together out of the remnants of the Soviet Union.

Such an agreement would go beyond the periodic high-level NATO-Russia meetings that resumed in June after the 28-nation western alliance ended a diplomatic boycott to protest the Georgia invasion.

Brzezinski, who served under President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981, wrote of a need “to consolidate security in Europe by drawing Russia into a closer political and military association with the Euro-Atlantic community and to engage Russia in a wider web of global security that indirectly facilitates the fading of Russia’s lingering imperial ambitions.”

‘Strategic Partnership’

Rasmussen urged a “strategic partnership” with Russia to ward off common threats such as terrorism.

NATO-Russia ties were strained by Bush administration plans for a missile-defense system in eastern Europe and efforts to offer alliance membership to Ukraine and Georgia, two former Soviet republics.

Relations broke down completely when Russia rolled over Georgia’s army in a five-day war to reestablish its sphere of influence. Russia later granted diplomatic recognition to two territories, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which declared independence and established military outposts in them.

President Barack Obama set out to “reset” relations with the Kremlin, heralding an East-West thaw.

Russian and NATO foreign ministers held their first post- Georgia-war meeting in Greece in June, agreeing to resume military-to-military cooperation.

Rasmussen, 56, a former Danish prime minister who became alliance chief Aug. 1, said he had not yet read Brzezinski’s proposals and stressed that any outreach to Russia would not undermine NATO’s role as the bedrock of trans-Atlantic security.

“The cornerstone of Euro-Atlantic security will still be NATO,” Rasmussen said.

To contact the reporter on this story: James G. Neuger in Brussels atjneuger@bloomberg.net

Source: www.bloomberg.com, August 31, 2009

September 2, 2009
PIRATES OF THE BLACK SEA

Nezavisimaya Gazeta
September 1, 2009

Backed by Russia, Abkhazia promises to seize Georgian ships
Author: Yuri Simonjan
RUSSIA MIGHT FIND ITSELF DRAGGED INTO A CONFLICT BETWEEN
TBILISI AND SUKHUMI AGAIN

Backed by Russia, Abkhazia is prepared to challenge Georgia in the
Black Sea. “They leave us no choice. We will seize Georgian
ships,” Abkhazian Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba said. Georgia had
seized and arrested several ships on the run to and from Abkhazia
last month.
   Tbilisi in its turn only emphasized the resolve to board and
detain all vessels entering territorial waters of Georgia,
including the Abkhazian part, without permit.
   Sukhumi turned to Moscow and immediately obtained its promise
of assistance. Ships navigating territorial waters of Abkhazia
will be protected by Russian and Abkhazians border guards. “All
attention was focused on the Abkhazian-Georgian land border. The
situation at sea requires attention too,” Shamba announced.
   The Georgian Coast Guard detained 23 ships for “violation of
the entry regulations” this year and nearly 70 over the last four
years. The ships are almost always Turkish, Ukrainian, Russian,
and Greek.
   “Seizing ships in neutral waters, Georgia commits acts of
piracy. Our appeals to the UN and EU remain unanswered which only
encourages Georgia. Tbilisi must have forgotten that Georgian
ships pass us by on the way to Ukrainian, Bulgaria, and Greece and
that we can respond in kind,” Shamba said.
   The minister said that the situation had been more or less
tolerable until US Vice President Josef Biden’s visit to Georgia
this spring. “The Georgian authorities must have been given
assurances of some sort,” Shamba assumed. He announced that
Georgia’s actions constitute a violation of the settlement
agreement reached with the European Union’s help.
   Official Tbilisi pays no heed to Sukhumi’s protestations. It
maintains that sailing into Abkhazian ports without authorization
from the central government of Georgia is a violation that will
not be tolerated.
   Georgian Deputy Foreign Minister David Dzhalagania said at
the press conference this Monday that participation of Russia
would be a height of cynicism. He added that Russia had already
assaulted Georgia once.
   “Russia’s attempts to protect trespassers in the Georgian
territorial waters will be appraised and treated as piracy.
Freight traffic to Abkhazia without Tbilisi’s permit is a gross
violation of the Georgian legislation,” State Minister for
Reintegration Temur Yakobashvili said.
   Military expert Irakly Sesiashvili said that Tbilisi was
trying to bite more than it could possibly chew. Attempts to
prevent Russian ships from entering the local waters will lead to
a dangerous confrontation or Georgia will have to cry uncle.
Sesiashvili said the international community alone could settle
the issue.

September 1, 2009
Stalin Planned to Annex Parts of Iran, Turkey and China Using Molotov-Ribbentrop ‘Model,’ Azerbaijani Scholar Says

Paul Goble

Vienna, August 31 – Stalin viewed the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which allowed Moscow to seize the Baltic countries, Bessarabia, and part of Poland as “a model” for the subsequent annexation of portions of Iran, Turkey and China, an Azerbaijani scholar has suggested.
And while the Soviet dictator did not succeed in doing so in any of these cases, largely because of Stalin’s dependence on the West after Hitler invaded his former ally in June 1941 and because of Western opposition in each, the existence of these plans demolishes the arguments of those who insist that the pact was only a defensive rather than also an offensive accord.
In an analysis of recent research on these questions posted on the 1news.az site over the weekend, Jeyhun Najafov calls attention to an aspect of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that has attracted little attention during this year’s debate on the 70th anniversary of the accord between Hitler and Stalin (1news.az/analytics/20090829104314684.html).
As almost all sides in that debate concede, the secret protocol attached to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact put part of Poland, Finland, Bessarabia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in Moscow’s sphere of influence, opening the way for the Soviet Union to expand it borders to the West.
Stalin’s supporters argue that this was a defensive maneuver, designed to protect the Soviet Union from what the Soviet dictator assumed would be an eventual German attack on the USSR, while critics of Stalin argue that the Soviet agreement with the Nazis was simply about the territorial aggrandizement of Stalin’s empire.
Research conducted by Dzhakhangir Nadzhafov, a scholar at the Moscow Institute of General History, clearly shows that Stalin’s critics have the better argument, given that documents he published in Moscow’s “Voprosy istorii” show that Stalin planned to use the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as “a model” for annexing other neighboring regions.
Not surprisingly, Nadzhafov focused on Stalin’s plans to annex the northern regions of Iran, the population of which was and remains predominantly ethnically Azerbaijani, but he also explored the Soviet dictator’s plans to annex the Xinjiang Region of China and some of the eastern districts of Turkey.
In 1941, Nadzhafov wrote, Mirdzhafar Bagirov, the Communist Party boss of Azerbaijan, invoking Stalin, said that “in Iran it is necessary to undertake the tactic and strategy of the model of uniting Polish territories to Ukraine and Belorussia,” an indication that Moscow’s plans for annexing portions of Iran were “practically ready.”
Additional evidence of the way in which Stalin viewed the secret protocols as a model concerns Xinjiang and the eastern portions of Turkey, Nadzhafov pointed out. “The Politburo planned to annex completely the Turkish districts of Kars, Ardahan and part of Avdina and divide the 26,500 square kilometers of territory between Armenia and Georgia.
Moscow had also defined the exact dimension of the territory of Iran that would be united with the Azerbaijan SSR, so all three of the republics of the South Caucasus would have expanded significantly, Armenia by 80 percent, Georgia by eight percent, and Azerbaijan more than doubled.
The Politburo was so committed to these territorial transfers and so certain that it they would take place that it had the foreign ministry work up the necessary documents and had decided on both the exact dates – the Iranian provinces were to be absorbed on November 7, 1941 – and the names of the Communist officials who would be assigned to these places.
Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 put all these plans on hold. Stalin needed Western assistance, and much of it flowed through Iran. As a result, the British insisted that Moscow recognize the territorial integrity of that country, something the Soviet Union did in a trilateral agreement with the US and the United Kingdom in January 1942.
But as Soviet forces moved westward and victory over Hitler seemed assumed, Moscow appears to have taken up the Southern Azerbaijan project once again, not only because many ethnic Azerbaijanis on both sides of the border were interested but because of the growing importance of oil, large amounts of which were located in this region.
Toward that end, the Soviets created the Democratic Republic of Southern Azerbaijan, a regime backed by the present of Red Army troops. But after the end of World War II, those troops were withdrawn, and the Soviet-backed puppet government of Southern Azerbaijan collapsed.
As Najafov noted in his article on Saturday, “certain [Azerbaijani] scholars connect the fall of the Democratic Republic of Southern Azerbaijan with what they see as a manifestation of the negative attitude toward Azerbaijan by Stalin, Beria, Mikoyan” and other Soviet leaders. But, the journalist says, such conclusions “do not have any basis in fact.”
Instead, he writes, “the Western powers considered that Stalin and the Soviet leadership had received an enormous zone of influence in Europe and therefore must not be permitted in any way to expand into Central Asia.” Indeed, Najafov argues, “the West was united on this question.”
“For Azerbaijanis,” he says, Southern Azerbaijan “was a question of the future of the nation. For the USSR, Iranian Azerbaijan was about the annexation of new territories, but for the West this was the expansion of communism.” And the West, possibly according to some accounts using the threat of a nuclear attack against the USSR, was not prepared to tolerate that.
But however that may be – and this question is still a matter of dispute – the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact not only was the product of a far more aggressive Soviet policy than its defenders want to admit but also cast a larger and more ugly shadow than even the victims and opponents of the Hitler-Stalin accord had thought.

http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2009/08/window-on-eurasia-stalin-planned-to.html

August 31, 2009
Russia to stop Georgian border guards from detaining ships in ‘Abkhaz waters’

RIA-Novosti

Moscow, 28 August: The Russian FSB (Federal Security Service) Coastguard, together with the Abkhaz border guards, will ensure the security of vessels entering Abkhaz territorial waters against their detention by Georgia. In part this is being done as part of the preparations for the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, the head of the border guard department – deputy head of the Russian FSB Border Guard Service, Lt-Gen Yevgeniy Inchin, told RIA Novosti on Friday (28 August).

Georgia views Abkhazia as part of its territory and regards the delivery of cargo to Abkhazia by sea without Tbilisi’s permission as breach of the country’s legislation. Since the start of 2009 Georgia’s coastguard has detained 23 vessels in Abkhaz waters for various violations. Four of them were detained for the violation of the rules for entering waters of “occupied territories”.

“At sea they are quite aggressive. Georgia regards entry into Abkhazia’s territorial waters as basis for taking various measures against vessels sailing under third countries’ flags, including measures of judicial nature,” said Inchin.

In his words, the agreement between the Russian Federation and Abkhazia on border protection envisages taking joint action to ensure security in Abkhazia’s territorial waters.

Asked whether Russian FSB’s coastguard will deprive the Georgian side of the ability to detain vessels sailing to and from Abkhazia Inchin said: “The FSB’s border guard department for Abkhazia has a group of boats which will be addressing this task, that is to say ensuring the untouchability (of vessels).”

“Trust me, they will be doing this in an efficient and productive manner, as the ‘factor of Sochi’ and the forthcoming Olympic Games is in this case the determining one. All of this will happen, in the near future. At present we need to create all the conditions for this,” the FSB general said.

Abkhaz border guards too will have border guard boats. They will be addressing the tasks relating to ensuring security in the water zone together with their colleagues from Russia, he added.

“The tasks aren’t easy, but we will fulfil them,” he said. (Passage omitted: RIA recalls recent detention)

(Interfax news agency quoted the head of the border guard squad of Abkhazia’s state security service, Zurab Marghania, as saying: “At present the Russian and Abkhaz border services are drawing up a joint action plan for the prevention of the Georgian border guards’ pirate-like actions in the Black Sea.”)

August 31, 2009
Pundit finds Russian leader’s words about Islam ‘surprising’

BBC Monitoring

Excerpt from report by Gazprom-owned, editorially independent Russian news agency Ekho Moskvy

Moscow, 28 August: Statements made by Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev about the necessity to exercise tough control over the young Russians who study in foreign Islamic universities, are strange at the very least, chairman of the Islamic committee Geydar Dzhemal has told Russian Ekho Moskvy radio.

“It is very strange when President Medvedev, an obvious liberal and an agnostic judging by his persona, makes judgements about what Islam is, what kind of Islam is right or wrong. Even related to his own official confession such judgements would sound too exotic when coming from him, but when he speaks about other confessions, this is extremely surprising,” Dzhemal said. (Passage omitted)

“One can prevent people from going abroad to study, one can – under an agreement with the administration of other Muslim countries – stage problems for Russian students, like it was in Egypt ahead of (US President Barack) Obama’s visit. But the matter is that Islam is a self-sufficient integral system. For 1,400 years now Islam has easily overthrown attempts of various leaders to use it in their interests, to castrate and adjust it; it remains an efficient concept, which withstands violence, injustice, oppression, corruption and lawlessness. If President Medvedev wants to fight this spirit of Islam, it is useless,” Dzhemal added.

August 31, 2009
President Medvedev Urges Special Youth Program For N Caucasus

SOCHI, August 29 (Itar-Tass) — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev believes the North Caucasus needs a special comprehensive program that would prevent youth from going astray.

“Regrettably, militant groups are still successful in luring young people into the web of their criminal activity, this is a hard fact,” Medvedev said on Friday at a conference devoted to ways of supporting Muslim organizations in the North Caucasus.

“To my mind it would be appropriate for us to devise a comprehensive program for youth in the North Caucasus,” he said. “Such a program would incorporate educational, enlightenment, morality and ethnic components, as well as measures to create jobs and arrange for normal, up-to-day and decent pastime.”

“This matches well the decisions we made lately in favor of complementing the school curriculum with the basics of religious culture,” Medvedev said.

The spiritual and moral development of youth is a major concern of the federal authorities.

“The Muslim clergy does share this concern,” he said. “In line with the existing legislation the state in every possible way supports religious Muslim organizations and Muslim educational establishments,” the president said. A week ago a new Islamic University opened in the Chechen Republic – a third in the Caucasus.”

“North Caucasus is a part of Russia that is absolutely unique from the standpoint of its cultural and ethnic diversity,” Medvedev said. “It is a home for 157 ethnic groups of the 182 that there exist in Russia – according to the population census of 2002. The share of those who identify themselves as Muslims is more than two-thirds.”

Naturally, said the president, the role of the muftis’ councils in influencing the state of the public mind in the region is great.

Medvedev thanked the leaders of the republics and clergy for their efforts to maintain inter-confessional peace and accord and their readiness to resist extremism, xenophobia and social injustice.

“I am perfectly aware that you have to work for this goal in adverse conditions, and sometimes to put your life at risk,” he said.

The Islamic community of the North Caucasus has developed very fast over the recent years. Ever more mosques are built and educational and cultural centers are opened. A hundred new mosques are built in the region every year and over 15,000 Muslims make annual pilgrimage to Mecca.

August 31, 2009