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CONCLUSION OF UKRAINIAN-RUSSIAN GAS DEAL POSTPONED AGAIN. Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov suggested on 25 January that the signing of accords resulting from the 4 January framework agreement on gas supplies to Ukraine in 2006 between Gazprom, Naftohaz Ukrayiny, and the Swiss-based intermediary RosUkrEnergo will be put off again, Ukrainian news agencies reported. Initially the signing was planned for 21 January and then put off to 25 January. "It looks today as if the agreements will not be signed," Yekhanurov said. "Russian experts are currently working in Ukraine but, unfortunately, we are not yet going ahead with the signing," he added. Earlier this week Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Minister Ivan Plachkov told journalists that the Ukrainian cabinet had approved a directive on setting up Gazenergo, a joint venture by Naftohaz Ukrayiny and RosUkrEnergo to sell gas to Ukrainian consumers, as stipulated by the 4 January agreement. The joint venture's charter capital is reportedly to amount to 5 million hryvnyas ($1 million) and will be contributed equally by Naftohaz Ukrayiny and RosUkrEnergo. JM
'OUR UKRAINE' OFFERS COALITION DEAL FOR ORANGE REVOLUTION COMBATANTS. The pro-presidential electoral bloc Our Ukraine has appealed to political forces that supported Viktor Yushchenko's presidential bid during the Orange Revolution in 2004 to sign a coalition agreement before the 26 March parliamentary elections, Interfax-Ukraine reported on 25 January. "Our potential coalition partners should recognize the president as the leader of an 'orange coalition,'" Roman Zvarych from Our Ukraine told the agency. Zvarych also said Our Ukraine makes the formation of such an "orange coalition" contingent on its partners' readiness to annul the dismissal of Prime Minister Yekhanurov's cabinet by parliament on 10 January. Our Ukraine reportedly made its coalition offer to the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc, the Socialist Party, the Kostenko-Plyushch Ukrainian People's Bloc, and the electoral bloc formed by the PORA youth organization and the Reforms and Order Party. JM
Speaking on 24 January during a two-day visit to Baku, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov warned that Moscow may pull out of the amended Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) that regulates the amount of heavy weaponry Russia and NATO member states may deploy in sensitive strategic locations, Russian and international media reported. Ivanov expressed his displeasure that some NATO member states have still not ratified the Treaty (Russia did so in July 2004). He said: "So far we are fulfilling all our obligations [imposed by the CFE Treaty,] unlike the other states that have signed the treaty, but have yet to ratify it. "[But] we have limits over which we will not go for now. As for the future, we will see," RTR and Channel One reported.
The original CFE Treaty was signed in November 1990 between the Soviet Union, its Warsaw Pact allies, and NATO. Following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and of the USSR, preliminary agreement was reached in July 1997 on amending the original treaty to impose "ceilings" on individual countries' armed forces, specifying the maximum number of troops that may be deployed in each country (including troops from a foreign country or military alliance), and the number of tanks, aircraft, artillery pieces and other military hardware that may be deployed in individual countries in the region extending from the Atlantic to the Urals. Those amendments were further adapted in 1999 to reflect the fact that by that time former Warsaw Pact members Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic had been admitted to NATO and Slovakia, Slovenia Romania, and Bulgaria, as well as the Baltic states, had been given the green light to embark on talks on joining the Alliance. (They eventually did so in March 2004.)
The Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe was finalized and signed during the OSCE summit in Istanbul in November 1999. But even before the Adaptation Agreement was signed, the U.S. signaled that it would not ratify it until Russia reduced its military presence in the North Caucasus, which had been expanded just months earlier due to the onset of the second war in Chechnya. Consequently, of the 30 OSCE member states that signed the amended treaty, only four -- Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia -- have ratified it. In recent years, senior Russian officials have repeatedly argued that the Baltic states should also accede to the amended treaty, but no further countries may do so until all the original signatories have ratified it. And Washington has imposed further conditions for ratification, namely that Russia make good on the agreement it signed on the sidelines of the 1999 Istanbul summit in Istanbul to scale down its military presence in Georgia, closing two of its four bases in that country by July 2001, and to withdraw all its forces from Moldova by the end of 2002.
Russia duly withdrew from two bases in Georgia by mid-2001, but an agreement on closing the remaining two by the end of 2007 was signed only in May 2005. The situation with regard to Moldova is even bleaker, as 1,400 Russian servicemen and 21,000 tons of hardware and ammunition remain in Moldova's breakaway Transdniester Republic with no clear date set for their departure.
The United States and other NATO countries continue to peg ratification of the amended CFE treaty to Russian compliance with the commitments it made in Istanbul, even though then Russian Defense Minister Igor Ivanov argued in February 2005 that those commitments took the form of bilateral agreements and are therefore not binding with regard to multilateral agreements. Ivanov's statement in Baku suggests that Moscow has decided to flex its military muscle and threaten to destroy a pact that has been described as the cornerstone of the entire European security system. Russian Foreign Minster Sergei Lavrov uttered a similar warning last month, telling RIA Novosti on 12 December: "If steps are not taken to ratify [the adapted CFE Treaty] in the very near future, we will be in danger of losing the whole regime of conventional arms in Europe," http://www.armscontrol.org reported.
But an unnamed Russian military diplomat quoted by "Vremya novostei" on 25 January downplayed the likely impact of a hypothetical Russian withdrawal from the CFE treaty. That diplomat predicted that little would change in real terms, and that Russia is unlikely to embark on a military build-up on its Western borders that would pose a threat to the West.
Speaking on 24 January during a two-day visit to Baku, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov warned that Moscow may pull out of the amended Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) that regulates the amount of heavy weaponry Russia and NATO member states may deploy in sensitive strategic locations, Russian and international media reported. Ivanov expressed his displeasure that some NATO member states have still not ratified the Treaty (Russia did so in July 2004). He said: "So far we are fulfilling all our obligations [imposed by the CFE Treaty,] unlike the other states that have signed the treaty, but have yet to ratify it. "[But] we have limits over which we will not go for now. As for the future, we will see," RTR and Channel One reported.
The original CFE Treaty was signed in November 1990 between the Soviet Union, its Warsaw Pact allies, and NATO. Following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and of the USSR, preliminary agreement was reached in July 1997 on amending the original treaty to impose "ceilings" on individual countries' armed forces, specifying the maximum number of troops that may be deployed in each country (including troops from a foreign country or military alliance), and the number of tanks, aircraft, artillery pieces and other military hardware that may be deployed in individual countries in the region extending from the Atlantic to the Urals. Those amendments were further adapted in 1999 to reflect the fact that by that time former Warsaw Pact members Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic had been admitted to NATO and Slovakia, Slovenia Romania, and Bulgaria, as well as the Baltic states, had been given the green light to embark on talks on joining the Alliance. (They eventually did so in March 2004.)
The Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe was finalized and signed during the OSCE summit in Istanbul in November 1999. But even before the Adaptation Agreement was signed, the U.S. signaled that it would not ratify it until Russia reduced its military presence in the North Caucasus, which had been expanded just months earlier due to the onset of the second war in Chechnya. Consequently, of the 30 OSCE member states that signed the amended treaty, only four -- Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia -- have ratified it. In recent years, senior Russian officials have repeatedly argued that the Baltic states should also accede to the amended treaty, but no further countries may do so until all the original signatories have ratified it. And Washington has imposed further conditions for ratification, namely that Russia make good on the agreement it signed on the sidelines of the 1999 Istanbul summit in Istanbul to scale down its military presence in Georgia, closing two of its four bases in that country by July 2001, and to withdraw all its forces from Moldova by the end of 2002.
Russia duly withdrew from two bases in Georgia by mid-2001, but an agreement on closing the remaining two by the end of 2007 was signed only in May 2005. The situation with regard to Moldova is even bleaker, as 1,400 Russian servicemen and 21,000 tons of hardware and ammunition remain in Moldova's breakaway Transdniester Republic with no clear date set for their departure.
The United States and other NATO countries continue to peg ratification of the amended CFE treaty to Russian compliance with the commitments it made in Istanbul, even though then Russian Defense Minister Igor Ivanov argued in February 2005 that those commitments took the form of bilateral agreements and are therefore not binding with regard to multilateral agreements. Ivanov's statement in Baku suggests that Moscow has decided to flex its military muscle and threaten to destroy a pact that has been described as the cornerstone of the entire European security system. Russian Foreign Minster Sergei Lavrov uttered a similar warning last month, telling RIA Novosti on 12 December: "If steps are not taken to ratify [the adapted CFE Treaty] in the very near future, we will be in danger of losing the whole regime of conventional arms in Europe," http://www.armscontrol.org reported.
But an unnamed Russian military diplomat quoted by "Vremya novostei" on 25 January downplayed the likely impact of a hypothetical Russian withdrawal from the CFE treaty. That diplomat predicted that little would change in real terms, and that Russia is unlikely to embark on a military build-up on its Western borders that would pose a threat to the West.