Category: Iran

Al-Sadr’s visit to Turkey- end to Iran’s influence in Iraq

Azerbaijan, Baku, May 5 /Trend News, U.Sadikhova, R.Hafizoglu/

The visit of the leader of Shiite resistance of Iraq Muktada Al-Sadr to Turkey will strengthen Al-Sadr’s position as a political leader and weaken the influence of Iran on the Shiite party of Iraq, experts say.

“With his position, Al-Sadr showed that he moved from the level of a religious figure to the political level, Turkish leading analyst on the Middle East, Mustafa Ozcan told Trend News in a telephone conversation from Istanbul. – Al-Sadr seeks to strengthen in the internal policy of Iraq, therefore, it is not excluded that he wants to weaken the influence of Iran.

In the end of last week, former Head of Mahdi Army, Al-Sadr, who has resisted the U.S. presence in Iraq, discussed with the Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Rajap Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara the question of establishing stability in Iraq, as well as the upcoming elections in Iraq in December 2009, TRT Russian website reported.

Al-Sadr’s visit to Turkey was the first public appearance of the leader of the Shiite resistance since 2007, supporters of whom – “sadrities” – took 28 out of 275 seats in the Iraqi Parliament.

Al-Sadr was the top of the list of persons searched by the USA after a series of explosions, organized by his supporters in the Iraqi cities. He also opposed the agreement on security between Baghdad and Washington, envisaging the stay of the American troops in the country by the end of 2011.

Analysts believe that Al-Sadr is interested in strengthening ties with Ankara, which maintains the same attitude towards all political and religious groups in Iraq.

Al-Sadr supported preserving the unity of Iraq and non-division of the country into autonomies, said Joost Hiltermann, an analyst on the Iraq policy.

“The forces inside Iraq that save a stronger central state and the national Iraqi identity are more eager to meet with neighboring states that also saver to Iraq staying as a single country,” Hiltermann, deputy director of the Middle East program at the International Crisis Group, told Trend News in a telephone conversation from Istanbul.

He said that it is not excluded that this visit is directed against some Iraqi Shiites, who focused on the decentralization of Iraq.

Analysts regard al-Sadr’s position as his move from the category of religious leaders to the political category, given the dissolution of the religious Shiite movement Mahdi Army, which is based in major cities Mosul and Kerbala.

Ozcan believes that al-Sadr wants to create a political party like the Lebanese Shiite party Hezbollah.

Al-Sadr’s interest in the upcoming elections in Iraq and the presence of 30 supporters in parliament show a desire to strengthen its position as a political leader, experts said.

His visit to Turkey will help to join the ranks of political leaders of Iraq, to which Ankara maintains a neutral attitude, said a leading analyst for the Middle East Husni al-Makhally.

“Visit [Al-Sadr], in Sunni country [Turkey] is very important to most of Iraq’s internal problems,” al-Makhally told Trend News over phone from Istanbul.

He did not rule out that the visit is aimed at weakening Iran’s influence in Iraq, which is among the Shiite political and religious factions.

Iran has close ties with Shiite communities Kerbala and Najaf, and also liaises with the Government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the Shia by the origin and leader of Al-Dawa party.

Sadrities seek to weaken Iran’s influence and consider communications between Baghdad and Ankara as important relations with Tehran, believes al-Makhally.

Mustafa Ozcan also does not exclude that the United States welcome the visit of al-Sadr to Turkey, as it puts off Iran from the internal politics of Iraq.

Al-Sadr himself is not enthusiastic about the influence of Iran, and therefore wants to put an end to Iran’s influence on domestic politics of Iraq “-said Ozcan.

In March, President of Turkey Abdullah Gul traveled to Iraq – for the first time over 33 years of relations between the two countries. Ankara, receiving Sadr after President Gul’s visit to Baghdad, once again proved how important it for political unity and territorial integrity of Iraq

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Source: news-en.trend.az, May 5 2009

May 10, 2009
Chief of Russia’s Intelligence in Armenia

Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan received Director of Russia’s External Intelligence Mikhail Fradkov on Tuesday, said Sargsyan’s press office.

The sides reportedly agreed that such meetings within the framework of Armenian-Russian strategic partnership helps focus attention on political, economic and security issues in the world, region and both countries with the view to outlining further ways of cooperation in meeting the new challenges of the modern-day world and finding effective ways out of the current situations.

The prime minister introduced Armenian government views on the economic situation, negative impacts of the global financial and economic crisis and ways of overcoming them, as well as relations with neighboring countries among which are Iran and Turkey.

Source: www.armenianow.com, 05 May, 2009

May 6, 2009
Cautious expectations for relationship between Russia and the US
This online supplement is produced and published by Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russia), which takes sole responsibility for the contents
Anatoly Torkunov, Professor and Diplomat
27 Apr 2009

The estrangement between Moscow and Washington has lately given way – with the election of Barack Obama – to a cautious sense of expectation. The apprehension is palpable in both Russia and the US. Given how much effort both countries have put into improving relations over the last 20 years, it would be a pity to lose the fruits of this difficult rapprochement.

Having said that, one cannot deal with a partner who does not value the partnership and who ignores your interests. No matter how important America is, friendship or enmity with her is not paramount in the life of the Russian people.

A new feature of American politics is the recent spate of moderately concerned pronouncements about Russia. Also the changes in personnel. Russia experts have been appointed to the National Security Council, to the State Department and to intelligence. Former ambassadors to Moscow were behind a recent report published by the Bipartisan Commission on US Policy Toward Russia.

in any case, for the first time in 20 years the American public has been told in no uncertain terms that US interests and those of Russian-border states are not one and the same thing. The commission’s report says that there is no reason to fear Russian investments outside the energy-sector in the US and the EU.

The report recommends extending the Start 1 treaty, suspending the Jackson-Vanick amendment, and making Russia a member of the World Trade Organisation. It also urges new negotiations on Russia’s participation in the planned American ABM systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Most revolutionary of all is the report’s idea that America should not try to build spheres of influence along Russia’s borders while counting on a “constructive response” from Moscow.

The report’s key theme is that the US administration must stop ignoring Russia’s interests since co-operation with Russia will be important in achieving American goals such as the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and solving the “Iran problem”.

Right after the report was made public Moscow was visited by Henry Kissinger. Dr Kissinger was accompanied by a group of Russia experts, including the authors of the report. Now that they have gone, everyone is waiting anxiously for the results…

Though some of the recommendations made informally by the Americans are encouraging, their formal proposals leave much to be desired. The Americans are trying to sell as a constructive idea a plan that would enhance their superiority of forces while forfeiting the last remnants of our former strategic parity – Russia’s only guarantee, in essence, of military-strategic security.

The American proposal does not stipulate a parallel reduction of tactical weapons of mass destruction, conventional forces and so-called geographical offensive weapons, meaning America’s new Nato bases near and around Russia.

The leitmotif of these expert recommendations is that America stop ignoring Russia’s interests. Yet US actions suggest a determination to restore America’s total strategic invulnerability. What does that have to do with Russian interests? Where is the opportunity to consider and defend them? The iron fist in the velvet glove…

I do not think that Russian diplomacy can easily return to the romantic atmosphere of Soviet-American relations under Gorbachev. “Perestroika diplomacy” was never poisoned by the bitterness of deception. It remained the diplomacy of negotiated breakthroughs.

But post-Soviet diplomacy is another matter entirely. It has been saturated with the spirit of the disappointments of the 1990s: the Nato-isation of Eastern Europe, Kosovo, poi-soned relations with Ukraine and – worst of all – the military destabilisation of Russia’s borders in the Caucasus.

To restore honest and respectful relations with the US is one thing; to accept American proposals that do not benefit Russia in order to do so is quite another. If the US is as intent on improving relations with Russia as Russia is on improving relations with the US, it must be prepared for some very tough negotiations – tougher than any since the 1980s – on a broad range of issues, including regional security.

The US is primarily interested in co-operation with Moscow over non-prolif-eration and Iran. Moscow, by contrast, is more interested in reforming the security system in Europe. We need to learn again how to link such things. The first meeting between presidents Medvedev and Obama seemed to have a generally stimulating effect on diplomats and politicians in both countries.

At the same time one must be clear: while Russia wants stable and friendly relations with America, for Russian foreign policy this is not an end itself. Rather it is an important tool for building a safer and more prosperous world. Russia will advance along this path in any case – preferably with the US, but if necessary without.
- Professor Anatoly V Torkunov, a former Washington diplomat, is rector of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk, 27 Apr 2009
April 28, 2009
Barack Obama Is No Jimmy Carter. He’s Richard Nixon.

THE NEW REALISM

By Michael Freedman | NEWSWEEK

Published Apr 25, 2009
From the magazine issue dated May 4, 2009

Republicans have been trying to link Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter ever since he started his presidential campaign, and they’re still at it. After Obama recently shook hands with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, GOP ideologue Newt Gingrich said the president looked just like Carter—showing the kind of “weakness” that keeps the “aggressors, the anti-Americans, the dictators” licking their chops.

But Obama is no Carter. Carter made human rights the cornerstone of his foreign policy, while the Obama team has put that issue on the back burner. In fact, Obama sounds more like another 1970s president: Richard Nixon. Both men inherited the White House from swaggering Texans, whose overriding sense of mission fueled disastrous wars that tarnished America’s image. Obama is a staunch realist, like Nixon, eschewing fuzzy democracy-building and focusing on advancing national interests. “Obama is cutting back on the idea that we’re going to have Jeffersonian democracy in Pakistan or anywhere else,” says Robert Dallek, author of the 2007 book, “Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power.”

Nixon met the enemy (Mao) to advance U.S. interests, and now Obama is reaching out to rivals like Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the same reason. “The willingness to engage in dialogue with Iran is very compatible with the approach Nixon would have conducted,” says Henry Kissinger, the architect of Nixon’s foreign policy. “But we’ll have to see how it plays out.” Hillary Clinton has assured Beijing that human rights won’t derail talks on pressing issues like the economic crisis, another sign of Nixonian hard-headedness. And echoing Nixon’s pursuit of détente, Obama has engaged Russia, using a mutual interest in containing nuclear proliferation as a stepping stone to discuss other matters, rather than pressing Moscow on democracy at home, or needlessly provoking it on issues like missile defense and NATO expansion, which have little near-term chance of coming to fruition and do little to promote U.S. security. Thomas Graham, a Kissinger associate who oversaw Russia policy at the National Security Council during much of the younger Bush’s second term, says this approach by Obama, a Democrat, resembles a Republican foreign-policy tradition that dates back to the elder George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, and then even further to Nixon and Kissinger.

It’s hard to know if such tactics will work, of course. But Obama has made clear he understands America’s limitations and its strengths, revealing a penchant for Nixonian pragmatism—not Carter-inspired weakness.

© 2009

Source: Newsweek, Apr 25, 2009

April 26, 2009
Opening of Armenia-Turkish border weakening Russian influence

By Messenger Staff

Thursday, April 23

Alexander Skakov from the Russian Institute of Strategic Research thinks that opening the Turkish and Armenian border will hamper Russian attempts to bring Armenia under its influence.

Today Armenia is under the Russian sphere of influence because it is confronting Azerbaijan and Turkey. Its connection to the rest of the world through Georgia is partly blocked and therefore the basis of its communications is Iran.

The Americans think they can offer Armenia better options and thus attract it into the US sphere of interest. Skakov says that if Armenia receives direct access to the Turkish coast, Black Sea and Mediterranean it will engage in more direct trade with the West, bypassing Russia. The West will also guarantee Armenia’s sovereignty. Skakov thinks that after opening the border with Turkey Armenia will become less dependent on Russia and more on NATO and the EU.

Source: www.messenger.com.ge, 23 April 2009

April 24, 2009
Azerbaijani-Turkish holding to build petrochemical enterprise in Iran

Azerbaijan, Baku, April 23 Trend Capital

The Turkish petrochemical holding Petkim whose 51 percent of stakes belong to the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) in alliance with Turcas will build a petrochemical plant in Iran which will produce methanol and polyethylene. Turcas Board of Directors Chairman Erdal Aksoy said, Petkim’s official Web site reported.

The Turkish Petkim company and the National Petrochemical Company of Iran signed a contract to construct the plant. A joint enterprise with 50/50 stakes will be formed with this purpose.

Capacity of methanol producing plant is 1.6 million tons per year and polyethylene – 300,000 tons.

Aksoy said the holding is interested in implementing projects in other countries. The negotiations are being held with Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Forming the enterprise in Iran is explained with low cost of raw material (gas) in the Persian gukf countries and low cost of power.

Earlier, SOCAR in alliance with Turcas Petrol and Injaz Projects possesses 51 percent participation share in Petkim. Turkey currently imports 70-75% of the necessary chemical products, but developing Petkim, the investment alliance SOCAR/Turcas/Injaz will provide an opportunity to increase the import up to 30%.

Petkim Petrokimya Holding is specialized in the production of plastic packages, fabric, detergents and is the only producer of these goods in Turkey exporting the fourth part of the output.

SOCAR intends to by 2015 increase the volume of the incomes of this enterprise to $4 billion from $1.9 billion today. Now the production capacity of this holding is 3.2 million tons. By 2015 this index will grow to 6.3 million tons. Today the needs of Turkey for the petrochemical production equal $6.1 billion, and this demand will annually grow 11-12 percent. Today the production of Petkim covers nearly 25 percent of the market of Turkey.

As a result of the measures planned to be taken, the production of Petkim will cover 40 percent of the Turkish market. SOCAR invested approximately $2 billion in the development of petrochemical complex.

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Source: capital-en.trend.az, April 23 2009

April 24, 2009