Woman’s reward for accidental killing stirs controversy in Russia

Ekho Moskvy radio, Moscow
27 Jul 05

[Presenter] The story of Russian woman Aleksandra Ivannikova, who as
you all know killed a taxi driver trying to rape her about two years
ago, took a sensational twist today. The Izvestiya newspaper has
learnt that she received a reward of R50,000 [next to 1,750 dollars at
the current exchange rate] for the killing. The money was awarded to
Ivannikova by an organization called the Movement Against Illegal
Immigration, which has the [Russian] acronym PNI. This is how the
movement celebrated its third anniversary. [Passage omitted:
previously reported details of case]

I add that during the hearing the court fully upheld the civil suit
brought by the victim, the father of the killed [taxi driver Sergey]
Bagdasaryan. The court ordered the defendant [Ivannikova] to pay him
R200,000 as compensation for material and moral damages.

The Movement Against Illegal Immigration, which decided to give
Ivannikova the award for killing Bagdasaryan, believes that she rid
Russia of a rapist and therefore should be rewarded, not accused. This
should be done by the state, but as it has not done so, the movement
is rewarding Ivannikova for killing Bagdasaryan, an Armenian, the
movement’s PR coordinator, Aleksandr Belov, told our radio station in
an interview.

[Belov] As there aren’t any official awards, we thought that since
Ivannikova is from a not-very-well-off family and has a young child –
he is five months old – we should present her this award. And we gave
her the money that we had collected. She acted in self defence and as
a result of her action she rid Moscow of a rapist. Unfortunately,
particularly at the moment, over 50 per cent of the most serious
crimes are committed by immigrants from CIS countries and the far
abroad. These crimes are particularly linked to violence and we are
drawing attention to this fact.

[Presenter] Belov said that Ivannikova received the award [start of
quote] for all the suffering she has had to put up with from the
law-enforcement system over the last two years, end of quote.

Ivannikova’s husband, Oleg, confirmed that he and his wife had
received the money. The prize was a noble gesture which would have
been hard to turn down, Oleg Ivannikov said.

[Ivannikov] It wasn’t R50,00. Let’s say it was a certain sum. As far I
unde rstand, people just collected some money, regardless of whether
we wanted it, and gave it to Aleksandra. It wasn’t to pay off the
compensation or anything, it was just a kind gesture. It was awarded
for a brave act. I doubt whether it the organization has nationalist
roots. It is just spin from the media, not them. [Passage omitted:
Ivannikov says members of pro-Kremlin groups are in the movement,
presenter says they have denied this]

[Presenter] The award of the prize to Ivannikova is clearly a case of
inciting racial hatred, Seda Vermisheva, a member of the Russian Union
of Armenians, believes.

[Vermisheva] There were infringements from the very beginning of the
criminal case. A man has died but nobody knows what he did or didn’t
do. [Passage omitted] He can’t say anything in his defence. There are
no witnesses.

If she is given an award for this, the next criminal case should be
against this organization for inciting racial hatred. They themselves
will come under a criminal article.

It is amoral for her to accept money as a reward for killing a
person. At all times she should think about the fact that she killed a
person.

[Presenter] I remind you that Ivannikova has refused to comment.

The presentation of this award is not the only action by the
organization against illegal immigration in the Ivannikova case. The
movement threatened the parents of Bagdasaryan, who Ivannikova killed
in self defence, Svetlana Gannushkina, the head of the Civil
Assistance organization, told our radio station.

[Gannushkina] Ivannikova killed this person accidentally and that is
evidently why she was acquitted [as received]. So it is pointless to
reward her for what the Movement Against Illegal Immigration wants
from us. She didn’t intend to do what happened.

The dead man’s father phoned me and said that the family is being
threatened by none other than this Movement Against Illegal
Immigration. I think that they represent more of a threat to Moscow
than the criminal diasporas that they talk about.

[Presenter] The speaker of the Moscow city duma, Vladimir Platonov,
effectively agrees with Gannushkina. He believes that the
law-enforcement agencies need to pay particular attention to movements
like the Movement Against Illegal Immigration.

[Platonov] If an organization appears that in this way stimulates self
defence and helps the victims of violence, then this can probably be
welcomed. But if an organization uses this to fight ethnic groups, it
is sad and, in my view, unacceptable.

There are violent people from all ethnic groups. When passing and
implementing laws the authorities have to show that all possible
efforts are being made to fight crime by all ethnic groups in order to
prevent the emergence of organizations that have goals which are
dangerous for a multi-ethnic state.

[Presenter] Immigration is beneficial for any state, Platonov
said. Workers coming from abroad are a boon for any country.

No need to rush US base withdrawal from Central Asia – CIS security chief

ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow
27 Jul 05

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) should be more
proactive when a crisis breaks out in one of its member-states,
Russian ITAR-TASS news agency quoted CSTO secretary-general Nikolay
Bordyuzha as saying in connection with the recent turmoil in
Kyrgyzstan. Bordyuzha said this addressing reporters at the United
Nations headquarters in New York on 26 July, ITAR-TASS reported on 27
July.

“The CSTO could have employed political rather than military means to
prevent the Kyrgyz political struggle from pouring out into the
streets, from the events developing according to a scenario which
ended as looting and violence,” the agency quoted Bordyuzha as
saying. “This is what we could have done. We could not and should not
have got involved in the internal political struggle or tried to
influence it or suppress opposition forces. This is not our business,”
he added.

Bordyuzha said that the CSTO, which is made up of Armenia, Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, was created to counter
outside threats. “We have drawn conclusions from the Kyrgyz
events. And in my opinion the conclusions are that we should become
more active and assertive when we see the situation exacerbate in one
of the states,” ITAR-TASS quoted him as saying.

Bordyuzha also spoke against a hasty decision on the presence of US
military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, ITAR-TASS said in a later
report on 27 July.

“Of course we need to be deciding on the time-frame for the bases’
presence and the expediency of using them, but I do not think this
needs to be done with undue haste and immediately,” Bordyuzha told
reporters. He said it was necessary to define the status of US bases
as “temporary bodies for the period of the active phase of the
antiterrorist operation in Afghanistan”. “As the situation stabilizes,
and it really is stabilizing, the issue of the bases’ withdrawal will
need to be considered,” ITAR-TASS quoted Bordyuzha as saying.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Georgian president denounces emphasizing of Harutiunian’s ethnic origin

27.07.2005 16:51

YEREVAN (YERKIR) – At a meeting with the Georgian Internal Ministry
personnel on Tuesday, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili
criticized media and some political parties for their position to
countinously emphasize the ethnic background of Vladimir Harutiunian,
detained in the assassination attempt against US President George
W. Bush, Armenpress reported.

“I do not care for ethnic origin. Harutiunian is Armenian, but the
widow of the officer (Zurab Kvlividze) he has killed is also
Armenian. Both are Georgian citizens,” Saakashvili was quoted as
saying.

Members of Congress Increasingly Use Revolving Door to Launch Lucrative
Lobbying Careers

43 Percent of Lawmakers Who Left Office Since 1998 Have Become
Lobbyists, Public Citizen Analysis Shows

Public Citizen
July 27, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Forty-three percent of members of Congress who left
office since 1998 and were eligible to lobby have become lobbyists,
indicating that Congress has increasingly become a way station on the
path to the lucrative influence-peddling industry, according to a new
Public Citizen report released today.

The report, Congressional Revolving Doors: The Journey from Congress to
K Street, examines in depth the case of one former member who has done
particularly well after going through the revolving door. Just days
after he left Congress in 1999 amid allegations of an extramarital
affair, former U.S. Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.) opened a lobbying shop.
In the first year he pulled in $1.1 million, even though he was
restricted from personally lobbying his former colleagues for a year.
(Former members often skirt the lobby prohibition rules by supervising
other lobbyists for the first year after leaving Congress.) The next
year, after the cooling-off period was lifted, his firm’s lobbying
revenues more than quadrupled to $4.8 million.

The report, based on hundreds of lobbyist registration documents as well
as industry and news media reports, is available at
, a new Public Citizen Web site launched
today and designed to track the influence of special interests in
Washington. The Web site contains a searchable database of former
federal officials and staff who have passed through the revolving door,
Public Citizen investigative reports on lobbying battles waged by
industry, detailed summaries of influence-peddling laws and
recommendations for reforming the system.

`People used to run for Congress to serve the greater good and help the
public,’ said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook. `Now Congress has
become a way station to wealth. Members use it for job training and
networking so they can leave office and cash in on the connections they
forged as elected officials. No wonder the public is cynical about whose
interests lawmakers are protecting in Washington. Lobbying has become
the top career choice for departing members of Congress.’

According to the report:

* Forty-three percent of the 198 members who have left Congress since
1998 and were eligible to lobby have become registered lobbyists.
* Fifty percent of eligible departing members of the U.S. Senate have
become lobbyists (18 of 36) while 42 percent of eligible departing
members of the U.S. House of Representatives have become lobbyists (68
of 162).
* Almost 52 percent of the Republican members of Congress who left
Capitol Hill since 1998 registered to lobby (58 of 112) compared to 33
percent of the departing Democrats (28 of 86). This could reflect the
fact that after George W. Bush became president, Washington became a
hostile place for lobbyists whose contacts were Democratic. As part of
the `K Street Project’ pushed by Republicans, including House Majority
Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), lobbying firms that hired former Democratic
members of Congress were to be denied access and business by the
Republican majority.
* Of the 2000 departing class, the ratio was even more lopsided when
Republicans won the White House and retained control of Congress. More
than 62 percent of Republicans (23 of 37) who left that year became
lobbyists, compared to only 15 percent of Democrats (2 of 13).

Livingston exemplifies how a member-turned-lobbyist interacts with his
former colleagues. In six years, Livingston built his business into the
12th largest non-law lobbying firm in Washington and took in almost $40
million from 1999 through 2004, records show. Among his clients are
Turkey, Morocco and the Cayman Islands, which collectively paid his firm
$11 million from 2000 to 2004, with $9 million of that coming from Turkey.

Livingston delivered; he helped ensure that a $1 billion supplemental
appropriation for Turkey remained intact through the legislative
process, despite that country’s refusal to allow U.S. troops to use its
soil as a staging area for the Iraq invasion. He also helped kill an
amendment that would have formally recognized the Armenian genocide that
occurred between 1915 and 1923. Turkey has always opposed this recognition.

Livingston, his wife Bonnie and his two political action committees
(PACs) also contributed $503,449 to various candidates or their PACs
from 2000 through 2004. Some of that money went to people Livingston
later lobbied.

`The revolving door is spinning faster than ever,’ said Frank Clemente,
director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. `When nearly half
the lawmakers in Congress use their position to move into a job that
pays so handsomely, it’s time to change the system.’

In light of the findings, Public Citizen recommends the following reforms:

* Extend the former members’ cooling-off period (the time during which
they are not allowed to lobby) to two years and include the supervision
of lobbyists as a prohibited activity.
* Require members of Congress to disclose their employment negotiations
while they are in office if they pose a conflict of interest, similar to
the requirement for the executive branch.
* Repeal the privileges that give former members of Congress special
access to former colleagues (access to the House and Senate floor and to
members-only gymnasiums and restaurants) if they register to lobby.
* Prohibit registered lobbyists from making, soliciting or arranging
campaign contributions to elected officials in the branches of
government they lobby (Congress, the executive branch or both).

Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization
founded in 1971 to represent consumer interests in Congress, the
executive branch and the courts.

Turkey summons Swiss envoy over genocide-denier’s detention

Anatolia news agency
27 Jul 05

Ankara, 27 July: Turkey has conveyed its uneasiness over Swiss
attitude against Labour Party (IP) leader Dogu Perincek by inviting
Swiss Ambassador in Ankara Walter Gyger to the Turkish Ministry of
Foreign Affairs (MFA).

According to sources, MFA Deputy Undersecretary Nabi Sensoy has
conveyed Turkey’s disappointment over Perincek’s being taken into
custody by Swiss prosecutor under charges that Perincek refused to
recognize the so-called Armenian genocide.

During the meeting between Sensoy and Gyger, Sensoy reminded Gyger
that the events of 1915 were not a genocide. According to the
international treaty of 1948 on the prevention and punishment of
genocide, in order to name an incident genocide, certain conditions
must prevail and an international court decides on the matter. To this
day, there is no decision by an international court that 1915
witnessed a genocide.

Sensoy informed Gyger that the Swiss attitude would block freedom of
expression and such an attitude would hurt bilateral ties.

Perincek was detained after making the remark that “Armenian genocide
is an international lie” in a press conference held in Swiss city of
Winterthur on 23 July.

Iranian press 27 July 2005

Quotes package from BBC Monitoring Service – United Kingdom
Jul 27, 2005

The following is a selection of quotes from editorials and
commentaries published in 27 July 2005 editions of Iranian newspapers
available to BBC Monitoring at 0430 gmt.

London explosions

Resalat [conservative]: “The London explosions have provided enough
pretexts for Western government to show their anti-Islamic beliefsý
The roots of the development of terrorism should be sought in the
policies of the Western countries. Is the world any more secure now
than it was three years ago when America unilaterally attacked Iraq
and Afghanistan, pretending to combat terrorism?”

Khatami

Iran News [moderate]: “The mild-manner, reformist cleric whose
two-term presidency began with so much hope and promise is leaving
office with a mixed recordý the more than 20 million citizens who
twice voted him in office would expect nothing less than a frank
discussion and truth telling session as well as a demand for the
release of all journalists and intellectuals behind bars, especially
Akbar Ganji.”

Women

Mardom-Salari [moderate]: “It seems that in developing countries no
reasonable solution has been so far found to equally engage women in
political activitiesý This problem should be seriously dealt with. We
have to pavethe way in all fields for women to take part in all
cultural, economic, and political affairs.”

Recreation centre

Jomhuri-ye Eslami [hard-line pro-Khamene’i]: “It is said that the
Armenians in Iran are going to establish a recreation centre on Qeshm
Island for tourists and Armenians where they can enjoy themselves
without obeying Islamic principles and free from Iran’s restrictionsý
Marina Agency, headed by an Armenian lady, has got permission to carry
out the projectý A poisonous plot targeting Muslims can be smelled
from this plan, though it is said that the plan is for Armenians’
activities.”

Armenian expert sees regional oil pipeline as threat to national security

Arminfo
27 Jul 05

YEREVAN

Armenia’s rejection of membership of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization [CSTO] will reduce the combat readiness of its armed
forces by half, a representative of the international relations
faculty of Yerevan State University, Aram Arutyunyan, told the
“External and internal threats to Armenia’s national security” seminar
today.

“Those saying that it is more appropriate to enter NATO in conditions
of incessant vengeful statements coming from Azerbaijan are either
fulfilling someone’s political order or are engaged in sheer
populism,” Arutyunyan said.

He said Azerbaijan’s and Georgia’s interest in entering NATO was
initially explained by the desire of these countries’ political elites
to put the blame for their own military defeats on Russia, while now
it is also backed by revenge. Moreover, it will take Armenia years and
enormous expenses to re-equip its army and create new logistics for
the armed forces, he said.

“Up to now, military cooperation with Russia was intended to address
the task of modernizing the armed forces. Azerbaijan may spend
billions on Phantom and Mirage planes, but the NATO programmes the
Azerbaijanis are so proud of were also attended by our officers,” the
expert in international relations said.

At the same time, Aram Arutyunyan said Armenia’s national security was
primarily jeopardized by the country’s isolation, the functioning of
the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, attempts to solve the
Nagornyy Karabakh conflict militarily, a possible US invasion of Iran,
the possible deterioration of US-Russian relations and even the
efforts of the Armenian diaspora towards the international recognition
of the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Empire.

Aram Arutyunyan’s opponents said it was important to remember the
stabilizing role of the BTC pipeline. They added that the West’s
interest in the pipeline’s uninterrupted operation would compel it to
take all the necessary measures to that end.

The expert from the Armenian centre of national and strategic
research, Alen Gevondyan, said the main threat to Armenia’s security
and sovereignty was the weakness of the Armenian opposition and its
inclination to appeal to external forces. He said that in conditions
of a continuing conflict on the border, any revolution might have
bitter ramifications for Armenia.

“One of the biggest threats to the country’s security and sovereignty
is posed by the illegitimate administration,” the press secretary of
the opposition People’s Party, Ruzan Khachatryan, said. Meanwhile, the
deputy chairman of the Armenian Liberal Progressive Party, Edvard
Antinyan, compared the opposition to a beaten up and bleeding wife. He
said that saving her life should be a higher priority than saving the
family.

Head of IAEA arrives in Armenia

Regnum, Moscow
27 Jul 05

The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA],
Muhammad al-Baradi’i, has arrived in Armenia, the Armenian Foreign
Ministry press service told Regnum news agency.

IAEA head is to meet the Armenian president, prime minister, foreign
and energy ministers. He will also visit the Armenian nuclear power
station.

Tiny Revolutions in Russia: Twentieth-Century Soviet and Russian
History in Anecdotes

By Bruce Adams
RoutledgeCurzon
173 Pages. $97

No Laughing Matter

The Soviet police state was probably one of the least funny regimes in
history, but the jokesters collected in Bruce Adams’ book didn’t see
things that way.

By Carl Schreck

Published: July 22, 2005

Educated as an engineer, Klava was working as a manicurist to pay the
bills while she waited for permission to leave Brezhnev’s Soviet
Union. She was tending to her customers’ fingernails one day when a
longtime client sauntered in and tried to move to the head of the
line. Klava explained that she would have to wait like everyone else,
and while she waited, Klava and her customers swapped political
wisecracks subverting popular Party slogans:

“When we say Lenin, we mean Party,” they said. “When we say Party, we
mean Lenin. And this is how we deal with everything. We say one thing,
we mean something else.”

After Klava had finished with her other customers, the unscheduled
client told a joke of her own: “There was a competition for the best
joke about Lenin. And the first prize is 10 years to where Lenin used
to go,” meaning jail or exile. The client, it turned out, was a KGB
agent. “If I did not value you as my manicurist, I would send you for
10 years to where Lenin used to go,” she said.

Klava was eventually allowed to emigrate, and the story appeared in an
article by anthropologist Elliott Oring last year. Still, the irony of
a KGB employee threatening the seditionist with a seditious joke
beautifully embodies not only the prevalence of political jokes in
Soviet society and the dangers associated with such humor, but the
cruel, arbitrary nature of the Soviet regime.

Jokes, or anekdoty, were indeed risky business in the Soviet Union,
Bruce Adams maintains in the introduction to “Tiny Revolutions in
Russia,” his light if thoroughly entertaining recap of Soviet history
told through a mix of amusing, tragicomic, baffling and plain unfunny
jokes that will strike a familiar chord with any foreigner who has
shared a couple bottles of vodka with a table full of Russians.

George Orwell was the first to dub jokes “tiny revolutions,” but it’s
an especially fitting title for Adams’ book, which reminds us that
humor can have very serious consequences when the joke is on a
totalitarian regime. The eight years Nobel laureate Alexander
Solzhenitsyn spent in prisons and labor camps came as punishment for
jokes he had made about Josef Stalin in his private correspondence,
Adams writes. “The anecdotes were necessarily underground humor shared
only with close friends.”

The meat of “Tiny Revolutions” is divided into six chapters devoted to
leaders from different eras. Vladimir Lenin, Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev
and Leonid Brezhnev each get their own chapter, while Yury Andropov
and Konstantin Chernenko, the infirm symbols of the crumbling Soviet
gerontocracy, are forced to share, as are Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris
Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. Embedded in Adams’ historical accounts of
each period, the jokes address the absurdities of Soviet life and take
down the vanguard of the world revolution a notch or two.

Viktor Bogorad

Soviet and Russian jokes have often been subversive, mocking elites
from Lenin and Stalin to the New Russians of the 1990s.

The Lenin years, Adams explains, marked the first appearance of
Rabinovich, a staple Jewish character who can never quite find his
place in Soviet society, despite the fact that anti-Semitism was
supposed to have disappeared on the road to communism:

“When no African delegates showed up at a Comintern Congress, Moscow
wired Odessa [a very cosmopolitan port city with a large Jewish
population]: ‘Send us a Negro immediately.’

“Odessa wired right back: ‘Rabinovich has been dyed. He’s drying.'”

Political jokes naturally continued in the Stalin era, lampooning
everything from shortages (especially of food), the First Five-Year
Plan and grandiose construction projects like the White Sea-Baltic
Canal, which saw hundreds of thousands of convicts dig 227 kilometers
of canal “with primitive tools in horrible conditions.” Jokesters
appear to have been included in the work force:

“‘Who built the White Sea-Baltic Canal?’

“‘On the right bank — those who told anecdotes, on the left bank —
those who heard them.'”

The funniest jokes in “Tiny Revolutions” are from the Khrushchev and
Brezhnev periods, not only because both leaders were ripe for mockery,
but also thanks to the political thaw that followed Stalin’s
death. Adams dubs the era “the golden age of the anecdote.”

The famously bald Khrushchev’s meddling with agriculture policy is
best summed up by one joke from the “Armenian Radio” genre, in which a
quick-witted radio operator from Yerevan sticks it to the bosses in
Moscow:

“‘What is Khrushchev’s hair-style called?’

“[Armenian Radio]: ‘The harvest of 1963.'”

Similarly, the Brezhnev-era jokes tend to ridicule the increasing
senility of His Eyebrowness:

“Brezhnev begins his official speech opening the 1980 Olympics: ‘O! O!
O!’

“His aide interrupts him with a whisper: ‘The speech starts below,
Leonid Ilich. That is the Olympic symbol.'”

But the Brezhnev chapter also includes a few gems about the rampant
paranoia of foreign spies and insidious Western propaganda:

“Because the BBC always seemed to know Soviet secrets so quickly, it
was decided to hold the next meeting of the Politburo behind closed
doors. No one was permitted in or out. Suddenly Kosygin grasped his
belly and asked permission to leave. Permission was denied. A few
minutes later there was a knock at the door. A janitress stood there
with a pail: ‘The BBC just reported that Aleksei Nikolayevich shit
himself.'”

In a sharp departure from the earlier chapters, the funniest jokes
from the Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin section are not political at
all, but instead aimed at gaudy and ruthless New Russians. Take, for
instance, the New Russian equivalent of “Why did the chicken cross the
road?”:

“Two new Russians meet on a Paris street. ‘Look at this,’ brags the
first, ‘I just bought this Pierre Cardin tie for $300.’

“‘Big deal,’ retorts the other, ‘I got the same tie yesterday for
$500.'”

The jokes in Tiny Revolutions are hit-or-miss throughout, but the
final chapter is somewhat anticlimactic. According to Adams, this is
because the political anecdote has essentially become obsolete due to
increased employment, a booming stock market and the declining rate of
poverty. It’s not a particularly convincing causal link, nor an easy
idea to explain in just three paragraphs, which is all he devotes to
this provocative subject.

“Tiny Revolutions” offers too cursory an account of 20th-century
Russia to be considered an authoritative work of history, and with
less than 800 jokes, it’s not exactly a comprehensive anthology. To
use basketball parlance, one might compare it to a “tweener” — a
player too small to play under the basket yet lacking some of the
requisite skills to be effective from the perimeter.

But the happy medium that Adams strikes is exactly why his book works
so well. Despite a standard-issue academic binding that threatens to
induce sleep faster than a handful of Imovanes, “Tiny Revolutions”
deserves a better fate than to be relegated to dust-collecting duties
in Eastern European Studies sections of university libraries.

Copyright © 2005 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.

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` Kommersant`: Gasleitung aus Iran nach Westeuropa um Russland herum

15:07 | 26/ 07/ 2005

MOSKAU, 26. Juli (RIA Nowosti). Die ukrainische Staatsfirma Naftogas
Ukrainy kündigte an, sie wolle sich am Bau einer Transitgasleitung
aus Iran nach Westeuropa – wahrscheinlich an Russland vorbei –
beteiligen, meldet die Tageszeitung Kommersant.

Naftogas-Vorstand Alexej Iwtschenko bot dem stellvertretenden
iranischen Ã-lminister Seyed Mohammad Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian zwei
mögliche Routen für die Gaspipeline an: Iran – Armenien – Georgien –
Russland – Ukraine – Europa und Iran – Armenien – Georgien – Schwarzes
Meer – Ukraine – Europa.

Am vergangenen Sonntag wurde in Teheran ein Memorandum über
Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem ukrainischen Brennstoff- und
Energieministerium mit dem iranischen Ã-lministerium signiert. Das
Memorandum sieht die Einberufung einer ` fünfseitigen Konferenz
(also mit Teilnahme Russlands) bis Ende September im Rahmen der
Vorbereitungen für die Umsetzung einer Variante des Transits des
iranischen Gases sowie die Bildung von Expertengruppen und eine
Kompetenzverteilung zwischen den am Projekt beteiligten Firmen` vor.

Die ukrainische Ministerpräsidentin Julia Timoschenko hatte vorige
Woche erklärt, dieses Projekt sei äuÃserst wichtig für die
Ukraine und `muss schnellstens verwirklicht werden. Nur so
können wir die Energielieferungen diversifizieren` .

Wie gestern aus Gasprom verlautet, habe der russische Gasmonopolist
von der ukrainischen Seite kein Angebot erhalten, an der Wahl einer
dieser Routen teilzunehmen. Das, obwohl keine dieser Routen ohne eine
Zustimmung Gaspromsgebaut werden kann, schreibt die Zeitung. Die erste
soll nämlich über Russland verlaufen, die zweite – über den Grund
des Schwarzen Meeres, wo bereits die russische Gaspipeline
`Blauer Strom` verlegt ist, so dass der Bau einer neuen
Gasleitung, die den `Blauen Strom` überquert, ohne eine
Genehmigung Russlands offenbar unmöglich wäre.

Dennoch erklärte der stellvertretende Brennstoff- und Energieminister
der Ukraine, Sergej Titenko, dass die neue Rohrleitung aus dem Iran
über Armenien, Georgien, die Ukraine nach Europa gebaut wird, wobei
sie auf einer Strecke von 550 Kilometer vom georgischen Hafen Supsa
über den Grund des SchwarzenMeeres zur Krim verlegt werden soll. Den
Wert des Projekts schätzt das Ministerium auf fünf Milliarden
Dollar.

Moskau sieht in der krampfhaften Suche Kiews nach alternativen
Gaslieferanten unter anderem auch den Versuch, den russischen
Gasmonopolisten unter Druck zu setzen.