South Korea Sides with Russia against U.S. Antimissile Shield (Feb. 28, 2001)

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TiM GW Bulletin 2001/2-2

Feb. 28, 2001

South Korea Sides with Russia Against U.S. Antimissile Shield

South Korea, Another U.S. "Ally," Backs Russia

NATO’s “Drang Nach Osten” Criticized; Russia and China to Sign Friendship Treaty; Putin on the Net

Moscow 6. Russia’s Arms Sales to Iran Foretell a Multipolar WorldMar. 22, 2001

SEOUL, Feb. 27 - That Washington’s European “allies” are leery of the U.S. antimissile shield plans is a well known fact. Europeans have even formulated plans to go ahead with their own defense force (see “British Troops to Serve under German General”). The Bush administration reluctantly acceded top it, “as long as it doesn’t threaten NATO’s supremacy” on the Old Continent. (Why Europe would need not one Cold War relic - NATO, but two defense structures, with no enemies in sight for thousands of miles, is another question that boggles one’s mind).

Now another U.S. “ally,” South Korea, has sided with Russia in objecting to Washington’s anti-missile defense plans, according to a story in today’s New York Times. Less than a week before he is to with President Bush in Washington, the president of South Korea today publicly took Russia's side in the debate over Washington's plan for a national missile defense, the Times said.

A joint communiqué issued by President Kim Dae Jung with the visiting president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, declared that the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which would be threatened by Washington's project, was a "cornerstone of strategic stability." The treaty should be preserved and strengthened, the communiqué said. Which means that Putin’s aggressive diplomatic opposition to Washington’s plans at the behest of the American “death merchants’ seems to be bearing fruit.

The declaration by South Korea’s president - whose country is protected with the help of 37,000 American troops - was one of the strongest to date by one of America's Asian allies. His statement echoed concerns among European powers that the U.S. was pressing forward with missile defenses in a manner that could set off a new round of nuclear competition by Russia, China and South Asia, the Times said, echoing some of TiM editorials from last spring (see “Dangerous Nuclear Saber Rattling”).

Since he won election a year ago, Putin has proposed to develop regional and mobile missile defenses that could be brought to bear against missile threats from "rogue" states as an alternative to the U.S. antimissile defense plan. Russia presented that concept to NATO's secretary general, George Robertson, in Moscow last week.

Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and Russia’s foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, also broached that

subject at their meeting in Cairo last week. Russia has also sought to show that more intensive diplomacy, such as Kim's opening to North Korea, might go a long way in reducing the threat from such states.

During Putin's visit to Seoul the two sides are expected to engage in negotiations over how to resolve Russia's $1.8 billion debt to Seoul, and how to overcome formidable obstacles to building new railway links between the two countries. Work on one rail line connecting Seoul, Pyongyang and Sinuiji on North Korea's border with China has already begun. But Mr. Putin is lobbying for the $1 billion rehabilitation of a second line northeast to Vladivostok that would connect South Korea's ports and industrial centers with Russia's impoverished Far East.

MOSCOW, Feb 20 - Nearly six year’s after the Truth in Media first revealed that NATO’s expansions plans and “partnership for peace” are nothing but another form of a “Drang Nach Osten” (“Eastward Push”), Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said that NATO's eastward advance into former Soviet bloc territory is "the biggest geopolitical mistake since World War II" comparable with Adolf Hitler's annexation of Austria, according to a Feb. 20 Agence France Presse report filed from Moscow.

"NATO is repeating Hitler's policy which began with the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria and led him on to attempt to conquer the whole world," Zyuganov said after meeting NATO Secretary General George Robertson, who was visiting Moscow to reopen the Alliance's information bureau.

"NATO is trying in the same way to apply pressure by force," the Communist leader said, citing last week's U.S.-British air strikes on Baghdad as an example, adding the attack "intended to force everyone to submit."

BEIJING, Feb. 6 - Chinese President Jiang Zemin will sign a treaty of friendship with Russia during his planned visit to Moscow in July, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said in Beijing this week, according to a Reuters news wire report. Tang stressed the treaty would not be a formal alliance like one that once existed between China and the former Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, the signing of the so-called Good Neighborly Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation will underline a growing warmth between the giant neighbors based partly on mutual suspicion of U.S. power, the Reuters said. And it is a further step “Toward a New Multipolar World,” as the TiM prophesied in December 1999, even before Vladimir Putin became Russia’s presidential candidate, let alone president (also see “Dangerous Nuclear Saber-rattling in Washington, Moscow and Beijing,” Apr 29, 2000).

"Some are pushing toward a world with one center," Yeltsin said after the signing of a joint declaration pledging to further develop mutual ties and maintain "strategic interaction." It was a clear reference to the United States. "We want the world to be multipolar, to have several focal points. These will form the basis for a new world order."

Comrades Boris Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin, also lashed out at the Washington-centered NWO at their Dec. 9, 1999 summit in Beijing. Both countries were vehemently opposed to NATO’s bombing of Serbia and to the alliance’s expansion into Eastern Europe. The Russian and the Chinese presidents topped a continued warming of the relations with a bear hug at the summit (see the photo).

Except for the absence of bear hugs, Russia’s new president Putin picked up where Yeltsin had left off in building a cozy relationship with China. His last year’s trip to China was one of the first foreign forays he had undertaken after becoming president. The signing of the friendship treaty in Moscow this summer will add another link to the strengthening of the Sino-Russian relations.

MOSCOW, Mar. 6 - Looking more like a savvy western politician working the crowd at a town hall meeting than a former KGB officer, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin took to the Net Tuesday, fielding questions for 40 minutes from a global audience at the BBC web site. A BBC moderator said at one point that more than 15,000 questions were received in the run up to the Web cast from Russian Internet users, and also from users as far away as Australia, England, Switzerland, Denmark and the United States, the New York Times reported today.

It was Putin’s first foray into cyberspace, an area in which he admitted he doesn’t feel as comfortable as flying a jet fighter to Chechnya, or sailing in a nuclear submarine in an Arctic sea. He said his two teenage daughters use the Internet extensively, so much so that their mother is trying to cut back on the time they spend on the computer. Putin said he received most of his information from a large staff of aides "who provide me with a kind of ready product" of daily information.

The discussion on the Internet did not break much new ground in conveying Mr. Putin's well-known views. He has already established himself as the most talkative president in the country's modern history, but the Internet session was significant as an attempt by the Kremlin to go over the heads of Russian and Western media in carrying Mr. Putin's message directly to a worldwide audience.

A Kremlin spokesman said tonight that the event had been two months in the making with a special studio set up in the Kremlin. "We also had to make sure that the site was well enough protected against hackers," who have broken into Kremlin Web sites in the past, the spokesman said. The Internet format was apparently an idea hatched by Mr. Putin's staff.

MOSCOW, Mar. 16 - Amid all the hoopla surrounding the expulsion of some 50 Russian “diplomats” from the U.S., another embarrassing story about the possibly stolen American military secrets appeared on March 16 in the Russian media. The Lenta.ru news wire reported that hackers from four countries are suspected to have broken into New Mexico’s Sandia lab which is responsible for production of all non-radioactive components for U.S. nuclear bombs.

The Russian source claims that the CIA has admitted that the lab’s secrets may have been compromised, and is conducting an investigation to determine the extent to which foreign hackers were successful in prying away the confidential information. “Special services” from Iraq, Russia, China or North Korea are believed to be associated with the hack-attack, according to Lenta.ru.

WINDSOR, Ontario, Mar. 24 - We received the following comment from Pero Kovacevic, a TiM reader from Canada, as his reaction to our story about the Sandia lab reportedly being hacked (see Item 4 of this TiM Bulletin):

“Thank you for sending me your update on Sandia being hacked. What a great news!

When mad dogs of NATO were bombing my innocent brethren in Serbia, out of desperation, I became quite active on internet as well as within my own community of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. After a while I noticed that my computer was behaving strangely, so I did a bit of research and learning, and after I installed some (firewall protection) software I was able to identify some of those that were illegally intruding into my machine. One of them, that I managed to identify, was from NS1. SANDIA.GOV in New Mexico. I researched the net, found their phone number (their fax number was incorrect) and called them up. I spoke to their "coordinator" Mr. Roger Adams who, after "investigating" admitted that, yes it was from one of their offices, but could not give me the person's name or email. Their security will take care of it, he said. Obviously the Echelon works and the Big Brother is on a lookout.

I thought of letting you know about this. This proves that the activities of Sandia were more than their incorporation states.

So, I take off my hat to those who did to Sandia what they have been doing to innocent, decent and law-abiding citizens all along. Best regards!”

Pero Kovacevic, Selo Perna, Krajina, Yugoslavia (presently residing, as a 3rd millennium slave, in Windsor, Ontario, Canada)

MOSCOW, Mar. 15 - During a visit to Moscow by Iranian President Mohammad Khatami last week, President Vladimir Putin publicly iterated Moscow's determination to proceed with its arms sales to Iran, Washington’s opposition notwithstanding. So the timing of today’s (Mar. 22) expulsions of the 50 Russian “diplomats” may be a tit-for-tat move by the State Department, and not only a result of Robert Philip Hanssen’s squealing to authorities, while this FBI agent is held on charges of leaking U.S. secrets to the Russians.

The Kremlin apparently believes that arms sales to Iran, China and India not only bring revenues and support Russia's defense industry, but also help create a "multi-polar world" in which American influence is diminished, the Moscow Times reported in its Mar. 15 edition. Iran's ambassador to Moscow, Mehdi Safari, told reporters last month that Iran may purchase up to $7 billion worth of Russian arms over the next few years. At a first glance, this figure may seem extravagant, but in fact it is close to the actual value of Russian weapons sales to Iran in the early 1990s, the Moscow Times said.

According to official Russian reports, Russia sold Iran over $5 billion worth of defense hardware including 1000 T-72C tanks and 1,500 BMP-2 armored vehicles (most of the armor was assembled in Iran under license using Russian parts) between 1990 and 1996. Iran also acquired 24 MiG-29 fighters as part of a program to assemble an additional 126 MiG-29 in Iran. The MiG-29 license contract was agreed by both sides, but was never signed because of pressure from Washington.

In the 1990s, Iran also got the long-range (over 300-kilometer) S-200 strategic air-defense system, three Kilo-class submarines and other weapons. Now Iran wants to supplement this equipment with S-300 air-defense missiles and modern naval weapons.

Iran wants to buy advanced propelled-warhead naval mines, including those equipped with a Shkval high-speed underwater rocket. It is also seeking new torpedoes for its Kilo subs, including the Shkval, and advanced anti-ship missiles. Furthermore, Iran wants to re-equip its air force with new fighters and bombers, but it is not clear whether Tehran will resurrect the MiG-29 deal or opt to buy Su-27/Su-30 airplanes as China did.

BAKU, Mar. 26 - Some world regions continue to be potential powder kegs even in peacetime. The Balkans is one such a place; the Caucuses is another. The latest word coming out of Azerbaijan is that this predominantly Muslim oil-rich country seems to be angling for NATO membership. And if Baku doesn’t make it directly, it may try to do it as a proxy - through the NATO member Turkey, one of Azeris’ friends and neighbors.

Azerbaijan's Defense Minister Safar Abiyev has called for NATO to set up bases in the Caucasus, ostensibly “to help bring peace and stability,” but in reality to curb its rival Armenia's influence in the volatile region. "NATO military bases in the Caucasus would promote peace and pacify those nations that try to destabilize the situation," Abiyev said during a meeting with the deputy chief of U.S. forces in Europe, General Carlton Fulford, according to an Agence France Presse Mar. 26 dispatch.

"Armenia has occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, and now uncontrolled guerrilla bands formed there," Abiyev said in reference to the Nagorno-Karabakh region which is under Yerevan's control.

Azerbaijan and Armenia, former Soviet republics, fought a three-year war over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region largely populated by Armenians that proclaimed its independence from Azerbaijan in 1991 with Yerevan's backing.

Some 30,000 people were killed and a million forced to flee their homes before a ceasefire was signed in 1994, but a final settlement has been inconclusive and tension in the south Caucasus still runs high. Armenian President Robert Kocharyan and Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev are to meet in Key West, Florida, in April in an attempt to resolve their states' bitter rivalry over the breakaway mountainous region.

Gen. Fulford reportedly urged Azerbaijan to boost its ties with Turkey, Baku's traditional ally in the region and a NATO member. Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev had indicated earlier that he would welcome a Turkish military base on Azerbaijan's soil. Abiyev had also sought to enlist Turkey's help to "show Armenia its proper place."

The AFP report noted that Turkey has strong ethnic and historic ties with Azerbaijan, which had prompted Armenia to accuse it of taking a pro-Azerbaijani stance in the Karabakh issue. In addition, Turkey refuses to acknowledge the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, which had further soured relations between Yerevan and Ankara.