The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Russia bolsters role in West Asia

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Monday, May 02, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Russia bolsters role in West Asia

Vladimir Radyuhin

President Putin has shown that despite its limited resources Moscow will not let Washington define the political landscape of West Asia.

RUSSIA HAS returned as a key player in West Asia following President Vladimir Putin's historic visit to the region last week.

During a three-day tour of West Asia, Mr. Putin paid the first ever visit by a Russian or Soviet leader to Israel and Palestine and the first such visit to Egypt in the past 40 years.

Mr. Putin stepped right on to American turf and challenged the position the United States enjoyed as the chief power broker in West Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union 14 years ago.

The Russian President announced that the Middle East Quartet, which includes the U.S., Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations, would meet in Moscow on May 8 on the sidelines of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II. He also proposed holding a Middle East peace conference in Moscow in the coming autumn and vowed to push his plan even after Israel and the U.S. rejected it.

`Honest broker'

Russia "will play as active a role [in peacemaking between Israel and Palestine] as the parties involved will want it to play," Mr. Putin said in an interview before the visit. Mr. Putin's visits projected Russia's new image of an "honest broker" in contrast to the U.S., which is seen as heavily tilted towards Israel.

In recent years, Russia has built close ties with Israel while retaining strong support for the Arabs. Mr. Putin said his visit to Israel, where emigrants from the former Soviet Union make up a quarter of the population, had "turned over a new page" in bilateral relations. Russia, which did not have diplomatic relations with Israel during the Cold War, today has the same tradeover with it as with India and exports hundreds of millions of dollars worth of diamonds and oil products to that country. Israel is keen on extending cooperation with Russia to space exploration and to getting Russian gas supplies.

Mr. Putin signed a military-technical cooperation accord with Israel, but at the same time stood firm on Russia arms supplies to Syria and promised military hardware to Palestine. He brushed away Israeli objections to the delivery of anti-aircraft missiles to Damascus, arguing that the close-range Strelets missiles would not change the military balance in the region, but would make it "more difficult [for Israeli aircraft] to make low-altitude flights over the Syrian President's residence."

Mr. Putin promised to give helicopters and communication equipment to the Palestinian Authority, and to train Palestinian security personnel.

Moscow also proposed supplying 50 armoured vehicles to Palestine, and although Israel said it would not let the vehicles through, Russian officials said the talks would continue.

"If we expect Chairman [Mahmoud] Abbas to fight terrorism effectively, he can't do it with slingshots and stones. We must understand this," Mr. Putin said in Ramallah. He also promised Russian aid in rebuilding the Gaza Strip after Israel withdraws from the territory this summer.

Russia was the first member of the quartet of nations Mr. Abbas visited earlier this year after being elected the new head of the Palestine National Administration.

Fruitful visit

Mr. Putin's visit to Egypt proved by far the most productive. Russia has moved to revive extensive economic and military ties the Soviet Union had built with the regional superpower. Mr. Putin became the first Russian leader to visit Egypt after Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1964 inaugurated the Aswan High Dam, a Soviet-built hydropower project that irrigated huge masses of arable land and met 80 per cent of Egypt's electricity needs at that time.

After long years of stagnation commercial ties between Russia and Egypt are growing again. Bilateral trade doubled last year, and while it still stands at a low level of $834 million the potential is very big. Mr. Putin discussed the construction of nuclear power facilities, and the supply of MiG fighter planes to Egypt. In a joint declaration, the two sides stated that "relations between Russia and Egypt have scaled new heights of strategic partnership in recent years."

Mr. Putin's tour of West Asia has crowned a string of Russian diplomatic successes in the region in recent years, which included rapprochement with Saudi Arabia during the first-ever visit, in 2003, by a Saudi leader to Moscow, and the resumption of close ties with Syria following President Bashar al-Assad's talks in Moscow earlier this year. Russia's opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq has won a lot of respect in the Arab world. Mr. Putin has reasserted Russia's traditional role as a counterweight to U.S. diplomacy and showed that despite its limited resources Moscow will not let Washington define the political landscape of the region.

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