Russia and U.S. Sign Nuclear Arms Reduction Pact - NYTimes.com

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By PETER BAKER

PRAGUE — With flourish and fanfare, President Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia signed a nuclear arms control treaty on Thursday and opened what they hoped would be a new era in the tumultuous relationship between two former cold war adversaries.

Meeting here in the heart of a once-divided Europe, the two leaders put aside the acrimony that has characterized Russian-American ties in recent years as they agreed to bring down their arsenals and restore an inspection regime that expired in December. Along the way, they sidestepped unresolved disputes over missile defense and other issues.

“When the United States and Russia are not able to work together on big issues, it is not good for either of our nations, nor is it good for the world,” Mr. Obama said as his words echoed through a majestic, gilded hall in Prague Castle. “Together we have stopped the drift, and proven the benefits of cooperation. Today is an important milestone for nuclear security and nonproliferation, and for U.S.-Russia relations.”

Mr. Medvedev called the treaty signing “a truly historic event” that will “open a new page” in Russian-American relations. “What matters most is this is a win-win situation,” he said. “No one stands to lose from this agreement. I believe this is a typical feature of our cooperation. Both parties have won.”

The Russian president signaled general support for the American-led drive to impose new sanctions on Iran, saying that Tehran’s nuclear program has flouted the international community. “We cannot turn a blind eye to this,” Mr. Medvedev said, while adding that sanctions “should be smart” and avoid hardship for the Iranian people.

Mr. Obama said he expected “to be able to secure strong, tough sanctions” on Iran during the spring.

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The apparently warm relationship between the presidents was on display as they entered the hall to trumpet music. They whispered and smiled with each other in English as they sat side by side signing copies of the so-called New Start treaty, then traded compliments during a follow-up exchange with reporters.

Mr. Obama called the Russian a “friend and partner” and said, “Without his personal efforts and strong leadership, we would not be here today.” For his part, Mr. Medvedev said the two had developed a “very good personal relationship and a very good personal chemistry, as they say.”

While the treaty will mandate only modest reductions in the actual arsenals maintained by the two countries, it caps a turnaround in relations with Moscow that sank to rock bottom in August 2008 during the war between Russia and its tiny southern neighbor, Georgia. When he arrived in office, Mr. Obama made restoring the relationship a priority, a goal that coincided with his vision expressed here a year ago of eventually ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

Even as the two presidents hailed the treaty, however, they found no common ground on American plans to build an antimissile shield in Europe to counter any Iranian threat. Mr. Obama refused Russian demands to include limits on missile defense in the treaty, nearly scuttling the agreement. In the days leading up to the ceremony here, Russian officials alternately claimed the agreement would bind the program or complained that it did not and threatened to withdraw if it went forward.

The treaty, if ratified by lawmakers in both countries, would require each country to deploy no more than 1,550 strategic warheads, down from 2,200 allowed in the Treaty of Moscow signed by President George W. Bush in 2002. Each would be limited to 800 total land-, air- and sea-based launchers — 700 of which can be deployed at any given time — down from 1,600 permitted under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991, or Start.

Because of counting rules and unilateral reductions over the years, neither country would have to actually eliminate large numbers of weapons to meet the new limits. Moreover, the treaty does not apply to whole categories of weapons, including thousands of strategic warheads held in reserve and tactical warheads, some of which are still stationed in Europe.

But the treaty would re-establish an inspection regime that lapsed along with Start last December and bring the two countries back into a legal framework after years of tension. Moreover, both sides hope to use it as a foundation for a new round of negotiations that could lead to much deeper reductions that will cover weapons like stored or tactical warheads.

The first task for Mr. Obama after returning to Washington will be persuading the Senate to ratify the new treaty, and advisers planned to head to Capitol Hill on Thursday, even before his return, to brief Senate staff members.

Ratification requires a two-thirds vote, or 67 senators, meaning the president needs at least eight Republicans. The White House is counting on the support of Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the senior Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee and one of his party’s most respected voices on international affairs, to clear the way.

But it could still have to contend with skeptics like Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, who have expressed concern about limiting American defenses. And the polarized politics of Washington heading into a midterm election are volatile, meaning a vote could be delayed until after the election, which would further put off other elements of Mr. Obama’s antinuclear agenda, such as consideration of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The White House wants a vote by the end of the year, and Robert Gibbs, the president’s press secretary, reminded reporters on Air Force One during the flight here that past arms control treaties have received near-unanimous votes. “We are hopeful that reducing the threat of nuclear weapons remains a priority for both parties,” he said.

But what he did not note is that the Senate has also rejected an arms control agreement in recent times, refusing to ratify the test ban treaty when it was originally brought up in 1999. Moreover, it took three years in the 1990s to ratify the first Start follow-up treaty, known as Start 2, which never went into force because of a dispute over Russian conditions attached during its own ratification process.

Mr. Obama hopes to use the trust built during the treaty negotiations to leverage more cooperation from Moscow on other issues, most notably pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear program.

Speaking after signing the treaty with Mr. Medvedev, Mr. Obama said the United States and Russia were “part of a coalition of nations insisting that the Islamic Republic of Iran face consequences, because they have continually failed to meet their obligations” under international rules governing the use of nuclear materials.

“Those nations that refuse to meet their obligations will be isolated, and denied the opportunity that comes with international integration,” he said. Iran maintains its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, but the United States and its western allies suspect Tehran wants to build a nuclear weapon.

Warmer relations with the Kremlin worry American allies in Central and Eastern Europe, which were already concerned that Mr. Obama’s decision last year to scrap Mr. Bush’s missile defense plan in favor of a reformulated architecture was seen as a concession to Moscow.

Hoping to soothe those concerns, Mr. Obama plans to have dinner Thursday night in Prague with 11 leaders from the region, including the presidents or prime ministers of Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Similarly, Mr. Obama made sure before leaving Washington to speak by phone with President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia to reassure him of American support. He will meet separately with Czech leaders on Friday morning before returning to Washington.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris, and Dan Bilefsky from Prague.

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The Dissident Who Came In From the Cold - Newsweek.com

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Nikita Belykh is radically remaking Russia's vast Kirov region. The country's democratic future may depend on his success.

By Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova | NEWSWEEK

Published Oct 22, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Nov 2, 2009

Dozens of villagers are lined up at the gates of the decrepit local boatyard on a breezy Saturday morning to witness an unheard-of event. They gaze in wonder as the visitor arrives: never in living memory has a regional governor paid a call to the backwater town of Arkul, on the Vyatka River, roughly 500 miles northeast of Moscow. Climbing out of his battered Land Cruiser in scuffed jeans and a New York Yankees cap, Nikita Belykh makes a startling contrast to Russia's standard-issue provincial bureaucrats.

Looks are the least of the differences: Belykh made his name opposing those entrenched post-Soviet apparatchiks as one of the most determined pro-democracy activists in the country. Old friends were shocked and angry when he abruptly abandoned their street protests and took a Kremlin appointment as governor of Kirov oblast, deep in Russia's neglected heartland. But Belykh is tackling his new job with all the energy he used to radiate as an opposition leader. He immediately begins peppering the boatyard's director with questions—especially about what needs fixing. "Tell me what you do!" Belykh says briskly. "Tell me everything!"

The shipyard is one small piece of an experiment he hopes will transform Russia—and so far, at least, he has the blessing of no less than Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev. It was Medvedev who appointed Belykh to the job late last year, essentially granting him a socioeconomic laboratory slightly larger than England. Kirov is a microcosm of Russia and its problems—chronic unemployment, decaying Soviet infrastructure and wretched public-health conditions, to name only three. Medvedev has made it clear that Kirov is his personal project and Belykh his protégé. If Belykh can raise Kirov up from its knees, there will be a clear precedent for applying the same management style across Russia. "Maybe some people would like to see us liberals fail," says Belykh. "My job is to prove the opposite."

And fast. Medvedev publicly deplores Russia's economic plight and has called for massive changes, but he may not have much longer to do anything about it. Former president Vladimir Putin, the KGB veteran who chose him as successor, recently dropped broad hints that he intends to take the presidency back at the next election, in 2012. Worse yet for both Medvedev and Belykh, hostility toward the Kirov project is growing, even within Medvedev's (and Putin's) own United Russia party. Two weeks ago the party's youth wing, the Young Guards, marched against Belykh's plan to hold a conference on regional development in Kirov. Whipped up by false rumors that the conference was sponsored by the U.S. International Republican Institute, the protesters carried professionally made banners with slogans like GET OUT WASHINGTON ORGANIZERS! and YANKEE GO HOME! They displayed no qualms about publicly attacking Medvedev's protégé—a sign of bigger challenges ahead.

But Belykh seems undeterred. Even by the standards of Russian democratic activists, he has a mind of his own. He grew up in a well-educated family near the Urals city of Perm. His parents expected him to study at one of the top schools in Moscow, but when he was 16 his father died of a heart attack, and Belykh stayed in Perm to look after his mother. That was the year Boris Yeltsin stood atop a tank and defied an attempted coup by hardliners trying to roll back democratic reforms. To this day, Russia's first post-Soviet president remains Belykh's hero. "I come from a generation of Yeltsin democrats," he says. "Nobody else but Yeltsin dared to give people freedom in the conditions Russia lived in the 1990s. Unfortunately we did not manage to keep that hard-won freedom." Belykh adds, "Now our job is to rehabilitate democracy."

A high flier from the start, Belykh majored in law and economics simultaneously at Perm State. At 23 he was made vice president of a local investment house, and at 28 he was appointed the region's vice governor. The next year—2003—he ran for Parliament on the reformist Union of Right Forces ticket, but the tide had turned against the progressives: the party won no seats at all. Belykh stuck with the party anyway and moved to Moscow to become its leader, but times grew even tougher, and members began talking about making peace with Putin. Belykh opposed any such idea. "I did not see myself as a part of the Kremlin's project," he recalls. He quit the party in protest.

Putin's strong-arm tactics had effectively neutered Russia's liberal opposition. And yet Belykh couldn't just stand by while the country deteriorated. While Putin has won heavy domestic support with his loud, aggressive foreign policy, Russia is hollowing out inside. Reform at the local level gets no attention, but it's essential if the country is ever to thrive.

That's where Belykh decided to focus his efforts. He passed a message to Medvedev that he wanted to work in regional government. He knew his old associates would accuse him of selling out, but he saw no other way he could make a difference. He was still struggling with himself when Medvedev suggested making him governor of Kirov. The Kremlin wasn't taking chances. Belykh's first interview was with Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin's chief ideologist, who warned him to keep his mouth shut in public about national issues like the war with Georgia. Belykh would be permitted to do a weekly radio show called A Governor's Diary on the liberal Moscow-based Radio Echo network—but only if the program stayed away from "provocative" questions.

The new governor arrived in Kirov in January. One of the first things he did was hang a portrait of Boris Yeltsin on his office wall. Then he auctioned off his predecessor's official car, a Lexus. He allowed all street protests to go ahead, including a thinly attended gay pride parade, and announced he was ready to meet with any group that had a beef with the government. He's been working 12-hour days ever since, mainly talking with people about their grievances.

Kirov has no shortage of complaints. Unemployment is set to reach 20 percent by the end of the year. The oblast's sole gasoline distributor, Lukoil, uses its monopoly to demand the highest prices in the entire Volga federal region. Infrastructure and public utilities are a constant source of outrage. And as almost everywhere in Russia, the demographics are a disaster: between January and August 2008 (the most recent statistics available) Kirov recorded 10,474 births and 16,204 deaths in a total population of 1.5 million. On top of that, an estimated 15,000 people left last year to seek better lives elsewhere.

But what seems even more baffling to Belykh is that Kirov's people seem stuck in the old ways of dealing with a hostile bureaucracy. "For the first time in my life I find myself on the same side of the barricades as the government," he says in frustration. At one recent meeting, he struck a deal with local labor chiefs on job security and keeping factories open—and the next day, they published an open letter excoriating him for trying to cut teachers' salaries. In another instance, a group of local NGOs organized street protests against high utility rates only a day after Belykh gathered their leaders in his office to find a solution to exactly that problem. "I want to say to them: 'People, I am much more experienced with protests than all of you. Here I am, your governor, come in and find solutions together with me!' "

But the single biggest challenge may be the region's law-enforcement system. Local NGOs have documented dozens of police-brutality charges, including numerous alleged cases of anal rape in police custody. At least four alleged victims have registered complaints with prosecutors. Nevertheless, victims who were interviewed by NEWSWEEK insisted on closing their curtains and speaking in whispers for fear of retribution. Few have much hope that Belykh will prevail over the local security forces. "There are areas which neither Belykh nor even President Medvedev can change," says one of the victims' lawyers, asking not to be named criticizing the police. "I have lived a long life in the Russian law-enforcement system and can assure you, it lives by its own rules."

Belykh has asked all his old activist friends to join his team in Kirov, but few are willing to relocate so far from the social and cultural mainstream. Even his wife and their three children remain in Moscow, where she manages a travel agency. (Their eldest son, 6-year-old Yuri, started school there in September because Belykh didn't want the boy tagged by Kirov classmates as "the governor's son.") One activist friend who has accepted the invitation is Maria Gaidar, 27, the daughter of Yeltsin's acting prime minister back in 1992, YegorGaidar. She once rappelled down the side of the Great Stone Bridge just outside the Kremlin, to unfurl a banner declaring NO TO KGB POWER. When Belykh accepted the Kirov job, she excoriated him for "selling his soul to the devil" but then relented. Another old friend from the opposition, Konstantin Arzamastsev, had to think hard before joining the team. "Only my respect for Belykh made me take this job," he says. "Kirov is far from being an easy place to liberalize."

After months of wrangling, Belykh has managed to appoint eight deputies, but almost every other member of his government is a holdover from the old regime. Kirov's legislature has blocked other appointments. By law the governor is also entitled to nominate a senator to represent Kirov in the Federation Council, but Belykh's pick was vetoed by Medvedev himself. "They made Belykh governor without letting him put together a team of his own," says an aide to Nikolai Shaklein, the senator who was named instead, requesting anonymity when discussing his bosses.

Nevertheless, Belykh insists on running the place his way—as democratically as possible. He keeps his advisers working practically nonstop and has them debate all sides of any issue before he makes a decision on it. "We plan to turn this region into the most transparent, corruption-free, and business-friendly region in Russia," says Gaidar. "But that is a long way off. We face a wall of Soviet mentality that has not changed in 20 years." Sometimes it seems nearly impossible. "On my worst days I think it is easier to rule like an Asian despot than to become a Russian Obama," Belykh says. "But look, to me this job is a chance to change people's attitudes about democratic values."

Changing those attitudes in Kirov alone will take "a social revolution," Belykh says. First, people need to see tangible benefits in their lives. "The level of trust for liberals in Putin's Russia has shrunk to almost zero," says Belykh. Even so, Medvedev has shown plenty of trust in him. This May the president became the first Russian leader to visit the oblast since Tsar Alexander I in 1824. Medvedev didn't merely put in an appearance; with Belykh at his side, he announced a crowd-pleasing new plan to pay newly unemployed Russians a full year's benefits to help them launch new businesses. "I am Medvedev's man," says Belykh. "I am his appointee, on his team. And not anybody else's." The question is how far the leader of that team can go to make Belykh's experiment a success.

Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/219008

Many Killed in Russia Bomb Attack

At least 20 people have been killed by a bomb at a police station in Russia's southern republic of Ingushetia.

The suspected suicide attack in Nazran, Ingushetia's main city, injured more than 60 people, including children.

The republic borders Chechnya and has seen a spate of shootings, bombings and other attacks on police and government.

The Ingush leader blamed militants, but Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sacked Ingushetia's interior minister, saying the attack had been preventable.

"The police must protect the people and the police must also be able to defend themselves," Mr Medvedev said.

Escalating clashes

Monday's bomb attack was described as the deadliest strike in months in Ingushetia.

The explosion gutted the building as police lined up for a shift change.

ANALYSIS
Sarah Rainsford, BBC News This attack is part of a recent surge in violence in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region of Russia. The large-scale separatist conflict that ravaged Chechnya has now ended after 15 years. In April, the Russian president declared Chechnya to be stable enough to ease security restrictions, and lower the number of Russian troops.

But the insurgency in the Caucasus has gradually changed form into an Islamist uprising, and spread beyond Chechnya's borders. Militants have targeted government officials and the security forces in particular, with a combination of deadly gun battles and suicide attacks.

President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was appointed by the Kremlin to head the autonomous republic of Ingushetia - and arrived vowing to end the violence and combat serious corruption. He's still recovering from an attempt on his life.

Images from Nazran showed scenes of devastation within the compound, with nearby homes also badly damaged and burned-out cars strewn nearby.

The bomber was reported to have rammed his vehicle into the gates of the police compound as officers were reporting for inspection, government spokesman Kaloi Akhilgov said.

"Practically all the cars and buildings in the yard of the police headquarters were completely destroyed," Reuters quoted him as saying.

The bomber was assumed to be among the dead, although this could not be confirmed.

Mr Akghilov told the AFP news agency that all of the dead were police, but 11 children were among those injured. Many of those hurt were living in residential buildings adjacent to the police station, he said.

Many of the injured were said to be in a serious condition. They were taken to hospitals in Nazran, but Mr Akghilov said the authorities were struggling to cope with the casualties.

"We have not had such an attack for a long time," he said, adding that hospitals did not have enough blood to treat the injured.

Much of the violence in Ingushetia has echoed the continuing unrest in Chechnya, with escalating clashes in the past year between pro-Russian security forces and armed militants.

Human rights activists and opposition politicians in Ingushetia told the BBC last year that the republic was now in a situation of "civil war".

In the most high-profile recent attack, Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was severely wounded when a suicide bomber attacked his motorcade in June. He has not yet returned to work but is said to be recovering.

In a statement, he blamed Monday's attack on militants angered by recent security operations along the border with Chechnya.

"It was an attempt to destabilise the situation and sow panic," he said.

Less than a week ago, Ingushetia's construction minister was shot dead by masked gunmen.

That followed the shooting dead of three employees of Russia's emergencies ministry.

In Chechnya, Russian forces were engaged in heavy fighting with separatist rebels until a few years ago, though the fighting has become much less intense recently.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8204670.stm

Published: 2009/08/17

Finding Those Behind Chechen Killings ‘Paramount,' Russian President Says

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 15, 2009

MOSCOW, Aug. 14 -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev declared Friday that the capture of those responsible for the recent killings of three Chechen human rights workers should be the "paramount task" of the nation's security services.

Medvedev also appeared to signal dissatisfaction with Chechnya's Kremlin-appointed strongman, Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel warlord who has been accused of terrorizing the population.

"I think this is a challenge for the Chechen leadership," Medvedev said at a news conference in the Black Sea resort of Sochi after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "The Chechen president must do everything he can to find and apprehend these murderers."

His demand came amid a surge of violence in Chechnya and two neighboring provinces, Dagestan and Ingushetia, that left 23 people dead. The bloodshed underscored the Kremlin's struggle to maintain control of the region against an Islamist insurgency that appears to be gaining momentum.

In the deadliest incident, militants burst into a bathhouse Thursday night in the city of Buynaksk in Dagestan and gunned down seven women, authorities said. The attack occurred after the rebels sprayed a nearby police post with gunfire, killing four police officers.

Six other police officers and five suspected rebels were reported killed in gun battles in Chechnya and Dagestan on Thursday and Friday. In Ingushetia, authorities said a woman who made a living telling fortunes was shot to death Thursday by militants who consider the practice a grave sin.

An American expert on the region warned in an article this week that Russia's repressive policies in the North Caucasus had created "fertile ground for terrorist recruiters" and represented a threat to U.S. security interests.

"Getting targeted assistance to the region, including job creation, should be of the highest importance to the White House and the State Department, as well as European governments," wrote Sarah Mendelson, human rights and security initiative director at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Referring to the unsolved killings of several human rights activists and journalists, Mendelson urged President Obama and European leaders to make clear to Medvedev that "impunity will not be tolerated" while pressing him to accept international help to address lawlessness in the region.

Chechnya's most prominent human rights activist, Natalya Estemirova, was abducted and executed last month, and a couple who ran a center for children traumatized by Russia's two wars against Chechen separatists was found shot to death in the trunk of their car Tuesday.

A day later, the Ingush construction minister was gunned down in his office. The Ingush leader, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, returned to work this week after recovering from an assassination attempt in June that killed four of his bodyguards.

Medvedev linked the attacks on the human rights workers to those on government officials, and said they were "aimed at destabilizing the situation in the Caucasus" and carried out by militants with foreign support.

"I have given all necessary orders," he said, according to the Interfax news agency. "Finding, prosecuting and punishing these murderers is the paramount task for all law enforcement authorities, for the office of the prosecutor general, for the Investigation Committee, and for other special services."

Merkel told reporters she condemned the recent killings "in the strongest terms" during a summit meeting that focused on trade and investment. "This is unfortunately a serious subject which we have to deal with time and again at many meetings," she said.

Human rights activists argue that the most likely suspects in the slayings of their colleagues are not the rebels but members of the Russian security services. Some accuse Kadyrov of engaging in "state terrorism" against his critics with the tacit support of his patron, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and a group of Russian lawyers has called for an international tribunal to prosecute war crimes committed in Chechnya.

Medvedev last month dismissed allegations that Kadyrov was behind Estemirova's death, but his remarks Friday suggest that he may be losing patience with the Chechen leader, a former separatist fighter whom Putin entrusted with unusual autonomy over the region in 2007 in return for his loyalty.

Kadyrov has condemned the killings and vowed to solve them, but he has also repeatedly derided Estemirova, saying she "never had any honor or sense of shame" and "was misleading society and writing lies."