VARIOUS: Fears of a new cold war as Russia-EU relations at a standstill

As EU and Russian leaders meet and disagree in Samara following a sour meeting between the U.S. and Russia earlier in the week, many analysts now talk of a new cold war. As the European Union and Russia try and resolve their differences in Samara on Friday (May 18), many analysts see the unequal relationship between the two as souring fast as a welter of disputes drowns out talk of a strategic partnership. In the words of a senior EU official, the mood at the Samara meeting was expected to be "grumpy". If so, it would not be the first "grumpy summit" with Russia nor will it be the last. In the Finnish town of Lahti last year European President Jose Manuel Barroso was at pains to reassure critics that the EU and Russia could resolve the issue of energy security following Russia's decision to turn off the gas taps feeding parts of the EU. Barroso then said the EU needed Russia and felt that he was confident he could build a relationship based on trust and mutual respect. "Positive interdependency. We want our relationship with Russia to deepen to achieve that we need to develop mutual trust," Barroso had said. But in the seven months that followed, tensions piled up over the future of Kosovo, the Polish meat dispute, Russia's interruption of oil supplies to a Lithuanian refinery, Estonia's moving of a Soviet war memorial in Tallinn and U.S. plans to build a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Russian ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizov denies the relationship has worsened since the Lahti summit. But he will admit it is going nowhere fast. Russian President Vladimir Putin himself said on Tuesday he saw 'no conflict of interestS' between the EU and Russia; only differences of opinion. "No I wouldn't say they have deteriorated. I would say that a number of issues have been stalling some for well-known reasons others for lesser-known reasons and we could have achieved more progress definitely," Chizhov said. Political disputes between Russia and many new EU members once in Moscow's orbit are partly to blame. European Members of Parliament (MEP) last week said the EU had to give its full support to member states such as Estonia and Poland currently in open diplomatic conflict with Russia over the moving of a Russian statue in one and the ban of meat imports to Russia in the other. One MEP, Liberal leader Graham Watson, even proposed cancelling the Samara summit until Russia stopped bullying its neighbours, Estonia in particular. Leader of the Greens Daniel Cohn Bendit said: "Russia is no longer the Soviet Union but at the same time Russia wants to carry out the same political maneouvres in many fields that the Soviet Union carried out for many years. It's power politics - it's not military power, but it's economic power now. The instrument they are now wielding is energy." The EU is not the only Western power struggling to manage relations with an increasingly assertive Russia. Moscow is clashing with Washington over U.S. plans to place elements of a missile defence shield in eastern Europe - Russia's backyard. This appeared to bounce back into the European arena when Putin said last month he was suspending Russia's obligations under the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty while linking the move to the U.S. defence shield plan. Putin said the NATO signatories to the 1990 treaty were not respecting it and the U.S. plan to put missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic made matters worse. He said Russia would look at withdrawing from the treaty altogether if negotiations he proposed with NATO countries failed to resolve Russia's grievances. Russia says the missile shield plan -- which Washington says is intended to protect from attacks by so-called "rogue states" -- is a threat to its national security. There has been opposition to the US plan in the Czech Republic which is due to receive a radar station in Brdy. Locals in the area that could host the radar voted overwhelmingly against it and demonstrations were held in the capital Prague. Although initially evenly divided on the plan, recent polls show that nearly two-thirds of residents now oppose it. Poland, still fuming from Russia's refusal to lift the ban on its meat imports, has shown hardly any opposition to the US plan to put 10 interceptor missiles on its land as part of the programme. Poland is considered a strong ally of the US having committed forces to the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both countries have agreed to start negotiations on the missile defence shield soon. However the Director of the German Marshall Fund, a leading think tank which brings U.S. and European policy makers together, believes Russia is using the U.S. missile shield programme as a bargaining chip. Constanze Stelzenmuller says Russia knows Europe and the United States needs Russia and now wants to flex its muscle on the international stage at a crucial time for Russia, as it nears presidential elections. "I think they are using this as a bargaining chip right now," she said. "I don't think that the Russians frankly mean that they are really scared of 10 conventionally armed interceptor rockets threatening their 2000 nuclear strategic deterrents. Er no. Definitely not. Or to quote Secretary Rice "ridiculous". But there are two other issues which are very much on the Russian and the Americans and European minds and that is the impending independence for Kosovo, which the Russians are opposed to and then of course the Russians are very much aware that their voice is needed at the Security Council in any resolution on Iran and I think they are using this as a bargaining chip," Stelzenmuller said. NATO and Russian defence chiefs failed last Thursday (May 10) to resolve the row over the European arms control pact and the chief of the Russian military staff, Yuri Baluyevski, repeated Russia's opposition to the missile shield being installed in Eastern Europe. The CFE Treaty was negotiated in the months after the Cold War among the then-22 member states of NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries, with the goal of achieving verifiable reductions in conventional military equipment. "Today we are offered, without the assessment of threat, and having accepted them on a hypothetical level, and this is the threat coming from Iran, as I mentioned to you, it is suggested to us that we should build new Berlin walls in Europe. We are against it in Russia, we don't see such a threat existing today and there is no threat that would allow us to move towards what we are against," Baluyevski said. Stelzenmuller says Russia wants to be recognised as a worthy and strong international player and that it is doing so by proving its effectiveness at become a "nuisance factor", as she puts it. But she adds, Russia is playing a dangerous game. "I think they are gaining recognition that they can be a nuisance factor if they want to and if you will this is something that they are willing to use. But, I think they also understand that this is a dangerous game. There is a thin line between threatening something and bluffing and being called with your bluff," Stelzenmuller said. This may be so and indications last Friday (May 11) were that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov adopted an unusually conciliatory tone in a speech this week, saying Moscow did not want its relations with the European Union and United States to suffer because of the missile shield issue. And the Czech foreign minister said Russians had signalled their readiness to negotiate about the U.S. missile shield and Prague was ready to talk. Yet the EU/Russia summit in Samara failed once more to unstick any of the ongoing disputes and, as had been expected, the launch of talks on an EU-Russia partnership agreement have stalled. And with a round of harsh remarks capped by a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, in which he seemed to compare U.S. foreign policy to that of the Third Reich, many critics and policy-makers are talking of a new Cold War, on diplomatic and economic fronts.

ITN Source | May 19, 2007

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