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RUSSIAN PRESS DEFINING ITS NICHE IN SOCIETY
By Raisa ZUBOVA, RIA Novosti
On January 13, Press Day is marked in Russia. This year it is a fitting occasion to sum up ten years of the press in a new and democratic Russia.
The holiday was instituted in 1992 to mark the issue of the first Russian newspaper, "Vedomosti or Military and Other News Worthy of Knowing and Remembering", which appeared in 1703, the epoch of Peter the Great. In Soviet days there was also a press day, only it was celebrated on May 5 - when in 1912 the first edition of the main Communist newspaper Pravda came out. However, Democrats who took over in Russia in 1991 preferred turning to the past, going to the historic roots.
Over the past ten years Russian society has been cultivating two points of view on freedom of the press. According to one, freedom of speech and press is nearly the only gain of democracy and market in the country. The other says that there is no genuine freedom of press in Russia at all - especially now.
It is hard to deny that since perestroika (restructuring) and democratic change the Russian press has made tremendous progress. Such phenomena of the Soviet era as censorship, lack of plurality in the press, over-regulation, and rigid ideological control on the part of party bodies are now things of the past.
But one cannot deny either that very many people in Russia believe that the Russian press would better not have made such swift progress. A considerable part of society is now saddened by low standards of newspapers and television.
They are critical of gutter publications and endless American thrillers on the air abounding in scenes of violence and nudity. Licenced western TV shows which Russian television channels are so fond of buying irritate many as examples of banality and immorality. Numberless serials, in critics' view, cater to bad taste and dupe audiences. One need not wonder then why Soviet-era films and television shows are now tremendously popular among viewers.
The state of the press in Russia evoked interest abroad following international repercussions of a scandal involving non-state television channel NTV. The channel's main creditor, Gazprom, was insisting on getting an NTV controlling stake and finally had its way. The stake was handed over as repayment for millions of debt incurred by its owner, media mogul Vladimir Gusinsky, who is now hiding from his creditors abroad.
Certain quarters regarded this process as an example of an offensive on freedom of speech by the state, although the state - through the mouth of President Putin as well - said repeatedly that Gusinsky's problems with Gazprom were economic and should be resolved by arbitration.
The problem of the press and its survival in Russia does exist, though. Media business in Russia - and this is no secret - yields no profits. And so more often than not it receives investments from those who want to launder their dirty money or those who need get clout in corridors of power to conduct their commercial affairs successfully. Quite frequently the oligarchs use the press to score accounts with rivals and to advance their own political interests. Properly speaking, freedom of speech in Russia in the 90s could be defined as freedom of speech for the oligarchs.
To avoid dictates of "those who pay" (be it the state or an oligarch) and so call the tune, media should learn to make a living by their own efforts, which is a difficult, worrisome and not so profitable a thing. Even international press organisations that are closely monitoring freedom of speech in Russia consider that the main task of the press is to create conditions for its economic independence.
Another problem is lack of high ethical and professional standards in the media themselves. The Russian press today - it need not be concealed - is often incompetent, demagogic, and inclined to use unverified information. It mass-produces rumours, is venal, tends to be cheaply sensational and in the process loses its linguistic and humane culture.
Today the Russian media are only defining their niche and role in society. The professional journalist community still has a lot to do to clean up its act, come to terms with authorities, and win society's credibility.
But on balance, summing up the ten years of freedom of speech in Russia, it is a safe bet to say that the press is on the right track. There is already a generation in Russia who does not know what censorship and the "principle of party press" are like and why they were needed. There is already a new generation of journalists for whom freedom to express themselves, plurality, objectivity, and diversity and truth of information are the cornerstones of their profession. And this means that freedom of speech in Russia has an assured future.
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SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANISATION GATHERS FOR EMERGENCY SESSION
by Valentin KUNIN, a RIA Novosti political analyst
Beijing has hosted an emergency session of foreign ministers of the member-states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) comprising Russia, China. Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
An official spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry has declared that the session was necessitated by the deep changes underway in Central Asia, which directly affect the interests of the SCO-countries.
Priorities on the agenda of the Beijing session included the developments in the region and the entire world in the light of the joint international efforts to fight terrorism, separatism and extremism, the settlement in Afghanistan and around it and the working out of a co-ordinated position on the post-Taliban settlement in the country.
The states party to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation believe that this process should proceed with the United Nations playing a central role and under its aegis, and should provide reliable guarantees so that Afghanistan will never again become a hotbed of terrorism, extremism and drug-trafficking.
The participants in the Beijing session stressed in a declaration on Afghanistan that it was the Afghan people's birthright to determine the future political system in the country and to choose the structure and nature of governing bodies. Any attempts to impose various forms of government on Afghanistan or to involve it in the sphere of anybody's influence may lead to another crisis in Afghanistan and around it.
The participants in the session paid particular attention to the co-ordination of efforts by the SCO member-countries to neutralise terrorist threats both in the region and on the territories of the six countries.
Indeed, this is quite natural. Despite the fact that almost all structures of the Taliban, the main hotbed of terrorism and extremism in the region, have been destroyed in the anti-terrorist operation, these threats remain on the agenda of the SCO member-countries.
Subdivisions of the Russian army and Interior Ministry in the North Caucasus are persevering with operations to destroy individual gangs of Chechen terrorists and Arab mercenaries remaining on Chechen territory.
The fight against separatism and terrorism remains topical for China too. The country is still faced with manifestations of Islamic extremism in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Area, northern China, with Muslim Uygurs constituting over 50 percent of its population. Taking into account that some 200,000 ethnic Uygurs live in Kazakhstan and 50,000 in Kirghizia, Beijing's aspiration to co-ordinate actions with the SCO member-countries in the fight against Uygur nationalism becomes understandable.
Uzbekistan is also faced with manifestations of religious extremism and separatism. Despite the fact that militants of the radical organisation the Islamic Front of Uzbekistan have lost financial and other kinds of support from the Taliban, experts believe that highly secret units of this organisation continue to exist in the Fergana Valley on Uzbek territory.
This situation explains the plans of the SCO member-countries to form a joint anti-terrorist structure, with its centre to be seated in Bishkek, the capital of Kirghizia. The priorities of this structure will be to warn, expose and cut off financial support, deliveries of arms and ammunition to various terrorist and extremist groups, as well as to prevent, prohibit and stop their activity.
The member-states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation assume that it is such regional anti-terrorist structures which should form an efficient basis for the creation of a global system to combat international terrorism.
It's important to note that the participants in the present Beijing session were against identifying the fight against international terrorism which has no specific national or religious properties, with a fight against certain countries, nationalities or religions.
The participants in the Beijing session repeatedly stressed the necessity for all parties to immediately draft a Comprehensive Convention on the fight against international terrorism and a Convention on the fight against acts of nuclear terrorism.
Naturally, the Beijing session also touched upon the current crisis in Indo-Pakistani relations. In particular, the joint declaration of the foreign ministers of Russia and China expressed deep concern over the escalation of tension between Delhi and Islamabad which may both prompt a general aggravation of the regional situation in the region and have a negative impact on the normalisation process in Afghanistan.
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RIA Novosti
* Russian-Brazilian trade in 2001 totaled about 1.5 billion dollars, said Alexander Yakovenko, an official Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, on Friday. On January 13-16, Brazil's President Fernando Cardoso is to make an official visit to Russia.
According to Yakovenko, trade between the two countries has over the past few years been "steadily exceeding one billion dollars a year". As the diplomat emphasised, Russia is interested in Brazilian farm produce imports. For its part, Moscow is ready to supply engineering products to Brazil.
In Yakovenko's view, Russian energy companies are able to build turnkey energy projects in Brazil, explore for and produce oil and gas, and help with construction of gas pipelines and other infrastructure facilities.
The diplomat also pointed to the growing interest among businessmen of the two countries in more active partnership ties.
* The public council on Russia's entry to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) believes that a balanced approach should be taken to joining this organisation.
In its address to Russian entrepreneurs, the council notes that Russia will take "some time to prepare its internal market for opening, especially in sectors which are currently non-competitive for objective reasons with foreign-made goods" In the view of the address writers, the significance of the WTO will grow for Russia as it increases the proportion of manufactured commodities in its exports. To do so, they believe, it is necessary to draft a special government programme to boost competitiveness of the most vulnerable sectors of the economy.
Entry into the WTO is today one of the crucial external economic issues for Russia.
* In February, railwaymen will have their wages indexed by 15 per cent, said Russia's Minister of Railways Gennady Fadeyev.
According to him, by the year's end their wages must be raised by no less than 50 per cent.
* In Tatarstan - a republic on the Volga within the Russian Federation - its president decreed establishment of an agency for the development of entrepreneurship. Its brief is to represent small business interests in state bodies, and to create economic conditions for implementation of state policy of supporting small and medium-sized business.
The assumption is that the agency will render information and methodical support to businessmen, assist in financing investment and innovation projects of small businesses and ensure participation of entrepreneurs in fulfilling government orders.
* In the Siberian Federal District, it is planned to set up in 2002 a council on small and medium-sized business, said Leonid Drachevsky, a presidential envoy to the district.
According to him, one of the council's duties will be to continually monitor legislation regulating the work of this sector of the economy. Another important goal, Drachevsky emphasised, is to work out a programme of measures to work with small business locally - in constituent members of the federation, municipal formations, and districts. Small and medium-sized business, he noted, is a living organism and a mechanism to control it calls for continuous adjustment and improvement.
* An auction to sell commercial quotas for catching marine living resources has been held in Moscow. Its offered quotas for haddock and herring totaled 181,200 tons in the Far East's North-Sea of Okhotsk, Western-Kamchatka and Kamchatka-Kuril fishing zones. The number of lots exceeded 340. The auction was open only to Russian individuals and companies. The ultimate prices of some lots exceeded start-up prices several-fold.
The holding of such auctions makes it possible to palpably replenish budget revenue.
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WHAT DOES WASHINGTON WANT?
By Boris PETROV, RIA Novosti analyst
The latest practical steps and military-strategic designs of Washington in the sphere of nuclear arms cannot but rouse well-warranted concern and fears. The plans of the US administration, which were made public the other day, to enhance the readiness of the nuclear proving ground in Nevada to such a level that it would be possible to hold underground tests as early as a year after the respective decision is taken figure prominently in the above-said list.
In word the White House, as it were, continues pursuing the "policy of abstention" from nuclear arms tests and at the present time the George Bush administration allegedly has no plans to resume them. But, as press secretary of the White House Ari Fleischer has stated, the president does not rule out tests in the future if it becomes necessary to check the reliability of the American nuclear arsenal.
The "future" is a loose concept. But the consistency of the moves of Washington and of the Pentagon to free themselves from any kind of obligations to the world community for the sake of making new types of nuclear weapons, components of the future system of national anti-missile defense (NMD) is visible clearly enough already now.
The already practically decided unilateral withdrawal of the USA from the ABM Treaty of 1972, Washington's unwillingness to back the ratification of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, and the "obsolete character", by American standards, of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons can be viewed in this context.
Washington's readiness, in keeping with the Russian-US accord, to reduce its strategic offensive arms to the level of 1,750-2,000 nuclear warheads could be welcomed. But it is only logical to ask: what the mechanism for "dismantling" the "surplus" American warheads and for removing parts and components from them will be, and how concretely will control over the reduction of arms be organised?
As the American side states, part of these charges which are removed from combat duty will be destroyed and some of them will be transferred to the reserve for subsequent destruction, but part of them will be kept as protection from unforeseen technical or international events.
Uncertainty again, and new reservations. At the same time the USA demands from the Russian side complete destruction of the warheads to be reduced.
Moscow holds the unequivocal view that the Russian-US accords on further reductions of the nuclear arsenals must be radical, controlled and irreversible. In other words, the strategic offensive arms must be reduced not only "on paper".
By and large, it looks that Washington's active willingness not to bind itself with international obligations and to withdraw at its own will from one or another treaty in the sphere of nuclear arms creates a sufficiently dangerous precedent and does not serve as the best example of international cooperation.
Furthermore, by its actions the US administration, intentionally or not, leads to torpedoing the international efforts to prevent damage to the process of nuclear disarmament and of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Should the USA shut itself off from the rest of the world on these problems, is it in a position to guarantee its security under the cover of a national "nuclear shield" the real possibility of building which is a moot question? The tragic events of last September showed vulnerability of the United States, and not at all to a nuclear attack.
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