Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Thursday he thinks “highly” of the Russian president’s European security proposal. “President Medvedev has sent me a detailed letter on European security, which reflects a new approach to the Euro-Atlantic region, I think highly of it. We are studying this document and consider it important,” he said.
Posts Tagged ‘President Medvedev’
Antony to begin three-day visit to Russia today
October 13th, 2009 |
No Comments
Defence Minister A K Antony will begin his three-day visit to Moscow from today to attend the Ninth meeting of the India-Russia Inter Governmental Commission on Military Technical Cooperation (IRIGC-MTC).
The IRIGC-MTC meets annually, alternately in India and Russia, at the level of the Defence Ministers of the two countries to review and discuss matters relating [...]
Tainted history
July 24th, 2009 |
No Comments
By James Rodgers
BBC News
What is worrying Russia Why is the country convinced that it is the victim of a campaign to make it look bad
President Dmitry Medvedev recently announced the setting up of a commission to counter the falsification of history. He said this was becoming increasingly "severe, evil, and aggressive".
"This is absolute poppycock," says Robert Service, professor of Russian History at Oxford University. "History is all about argument. There is no absolute historical truth about anything big in history."
Mr Service dismisses the Russian leader’s suggestion that his country is facing some kind of academic aggression.
Instead, he sees a desire to dominate, worthy of the most repressive totalitarian regimes of fiction.
"President Medvedev, following in the path of his predecessor President [Vladimir] Putin, wants to control history," he says.
"And he wants to control history as a means of controlling the present. This is the classic George Orwell scenario."
‘Hysterical reaction’
Many Russians, though, agree with their president.
Natalia Narochnitskaya, a former deputy in the Russian parliament and now a member of the new Historical Truth Commission, says that she is surprised by what she terms the "almost hysterical reaction" in the West.
"In the Western media especially, there is a certain prejudice against Russia and Russian history," she says.
"They always feel that Russia since, you know, Ivan the Terrible, is a certain country which is off the European civilisation."
"In August there will be such a yelling about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, saying that that was the step that led to the Second World War"
Natalia Narochnitskaya, member of the Historical Truth Commission
Ask a few more questions, though, and these two apparently separate views begin to converge.
At least, they agree on what the key issue is – World War II. And here lies the clue as to the real reason for the establishment of the new commission.
This is what appears to anger today’s Russian historical establishment: accounts of Red Army crimes on the march to Berlin; assertions by the Baltic countries and others in Eastern Europe that Soviet forces came as occupiers as much as liberators; any suggestion that Stalin’s Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were anything but complete opposites and bitter enemies.
Here, perhaps, there is a clue as to the timing of the commission’s founding.
Next month sees the 70th anniversary of the non-aggression pact between the USSR and Hitler’s Germany, something Ms Narochnitskaya expects the West to make a lot of noise about.
"In August there will be such a yelling about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, saying that that was the step that led to the Second World War, and that Germany and the Soviet Union were two equal, disgusting, totalitarian monsters."
Nationalist sentiment
Why does this matter today Do these arguments have any great importance beyond the walls of universities In Russia, the answer is yes.
"So many people are speaking about strong, Orthodox Russia, military power… The commission is partly a response to this atmosphere"
Tamara Eidelman
Moscow history teacher
The country sees its victory over Hitler’s forces as the greatest moment of the 20th Century.
The war is sometimes discussed in the news media as if it were a recent event, not increasingly distant history.
Any attempt to tarnish the glory of that triumph is seen as a deliberate attempt to make Russia look bad.
Russia’s past haunts its present. Recognising that, the authorities want to rule the version of the past which dominates today.
Tamara Eidelman, who teaches history at a Moscow High School, feels surrounded by nationalist sentiment.
"So many people are speaking about strong, Orthodox Russia, military power," she says.
"It is something that is very strong in historical tradition and in popular opinion. This commission is partly a response to this atmosphere."
The creation of this commission seems to go to the heart of what troubles modern Russia.
The chaos which followed the collapse of communism left many Russians deeply distrustful of politics and officialdom.
President Medvedev has complained of the corruption and "legal nihilism" which plague his country.
Russia’s leaders today know that they need this shining, sacred, memory of victory to give their people something to believe in.
In the near future, it may even be backed up in law.
The Russian parliament is on its summer break at the moment, but legislation is being considered – legislation that would make it a criminal offence to "infringe on historical memory in relation to events which took place in the Second World War".
James Rodgers was formerly the BBC’s Moscow correspondent.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Christopher Herbert and Victoria Kataoka Rebuffet: Weekly Foreign Affairs Roundup
July 17th, 2009 |
No Comments
The Week’s Top Stories in Foreign Affairs : Non-Aligned Movement Meeting in Sharm el-Sheik SI Analysis: Leaders of 50 nations convene in Egypt to discuss…
Kremlin tribute to dead activist
July 16th, 2009 |
No Comments
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has paid tribute to human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, whose murder has caused international concern.
Speaking in Germany, as her funeral was being held in Chechnya, he promised a thorough investigation and pledged those responsible would be caught.
Ms Estemirova was abducted in the Chechen capital Grozny and shot dead.
Russia’s leader said it was "obvious" to him that her murder was linked to her professional work.
"She gave a very open and sometimes very tough evaluation of what’s happening in the country"
Dmitry Medvedev
Russian president
The UN has urged a transparent investigation into the killing on Wednesday, while the White House says it is "disturbed and saddened" by the crime.
Memorial, the Russian human rights group which employed Ms Estemirova, has accused Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed President, Ramzan Kadyrov, or his close associates of responsibility for the murder.
Mr Kadyrov denied any involvement and promised to investigate the killing personally.
‘She spoke the truth’
"It is obvious to me that this murder is linked to her professional work and this work is necessary for any normal state," Mr Medvedev said after talks outside Munich with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"She did something very useful. She spoke the truth, she gave a very open and sometimes very tough evaluation of what’s happening in the country.
"And that is the value of human rights campaigners, even if they make those in power feel uncomfortable."
Unlike his predecessor Vladmir Putin, President Medvedev has moved fast to publicly and explicitly condemn the murder of another prominent Russian human rights worker, the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield Hayes reports from Moscow.
He is perhaps aware of the wave of international outrage generated by her killing, our correspondent says.
Ms Estemirova was abducted from her home in Chechnya and her bullet-riddled body was found dumped in a forest a few hours later.
For years she had documented appalling human rights abuses carried out by the Moscow-backed regime in Chechnya, our correspondent says.
Mourning in Grozny
About 100 mourners gathered outside Memorial’s Grozny office on Thursday, some of them weeping.
The dead woman’s daughter Lana, 15, said she was stunned by her mother’s killing.
"I can’t imagine [she] won’t be around any more and that I won’t be making a morning coffee for her any more," she was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.
Taus Dzhankhotova, 50, said she had been unaware of the killing when she showed up at the office carrying a pizza and melon she wanted to give to Ms Estemirova in thanks for legal help she had provided.
"What for What for" she said, crying. "They kill only the good people here. If she was bad, they wouldn’t have touched her."
Later, about 50 men and women walked in a slow procession along Prospekt Putin, a central Grozny street, to accompany the dead woman’s body, which was being carried in a yellow minivan to a cemetery in western Chechnya.
While Mr Kadyrov denies he had anything to do with her killing, many of her colleagues in Russia’s human rights community are unconvinced, our correspondent says.
Oleg Orlov, Memorial’s chairman, blamed the Chechen president personally in a statement on the group’s website.
Mr Kadyrov had, he said, "already threatened Natalia, insulted her, considered her a personal enemy".
The Chechen leader condemned Ms Estemirova’s killers on Thursday saying they "must be punished as the cruellest of criminals". </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Pledge time
July 10th, 2009 |
No Comments
The G8 summit in Italy has closed with world leaders pledging $20bn to help boost food supplies in the developing world.
There were also agreements among both developed and developing nations that global temperatures must not be allowed to rise to dangerous levels.
BBC correspondents at the G8 give their analysis on the main developments. Follow the links below to jump directly to their analysis.
Bridget Kendall on the G8 James Robbins on the environment Andrew Walker on developmentBRIDGET KENDALL ON THE G8 CONCEPT
Low expectations can be an advantage. The G8 has had much bad press in recent years, and the emergence of the other "Gs", as President Obama called them – groupings of G20, G5 and G14 – had threatened to undermine its exclusivity.
What was the point of a G8 club, many were beginning to ask, which was too narrowly-based to tackle today’s global problems and when it did reach a deal, never seemed able to live up to its own promises
At first glance, this year’s gathering did seem more consensual than it has been for some time. But on broader diplomatic questions, the sands soon began shifting.
The American and Russian presidents both arrived, basking in the warm glow of what appeared to be a ground-breaking summit in Moscow, crowned by a deal to get back to a new round of nuclear arms cuts.
But in his final G8 press conference President Medvedev sounded a chilly note: Russian missiles could still be re-targeted to point at Europe, he warned, if President Obama did not cancel plans for that controversial missile shield in Europe.
So much for G8 consensus building…
In the end, it seemed as though the main purpose of this summit was simply to take stock before the next global round of meetings. President Obama publicly warned Iran it had until the next G20 summit – due in September – to respond to an appeal to suspend its nuclear programme.
Many leaders invoked the Copenhagen meeting in December as the real deadline when it came to a proper global deal on tackling climate change.
So has the G8 had its day President Obama seemed to hint as much, ruefully complaining there had been far too many summits already in the six months he had been in office.
But it is much harder to dismantle clubs than it is to invent new ones. The Canadians are already preparing for next year’s event. And the French the year after. So watch this space… and see you again next year.
Return to top
JAMES ROBBINS ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Few people expected a decisive breakthrough on climate change at this summit. President Obama pointed out at the end of proceedings that the G8 was never really the right forum for that.
Nevertheless, the meeting of the major economies forum he chaired did bring a greater meeting of minds and of joint political will than we have ever seen previously.
The historic polluters – the industrialised countries who make up the Group of 8 – were able to join with the emerging economic giants in a shared acceptance that global warming must be limited to a maximum temperature rise of 2C.
That could not have been taken for granted before all those leaders came to Italy.
It helps bind India and China, in particular, into a process of restricting emissions of greenhouse gases – a process to which they have previously been highly resistant or even downright hostile.
The US, under the new management of Barack Obama, has moved a long way too. His commitment to aim for emissions cuts of a whopping 80% by 2050, alongside the other G8 countries, does have its flaws.
But it is a very big target, even if it is so far in the distance that it is quite hard to judge if really tough decisions will be made now to make deep cuts by 2020. That’s what the UN scientists insist is necessary.
The failure to agree an interim target for 2020 provoked the UN Secretary General into unusually harsh criticism. Ban Ki-moon told me at this summit that the G8 leaders of the rich world were failing to shoulder their "historical responsibilities".
No wonder everyone agrees that it is going to be a very hard road indeed towards Copenhagen and the December UN summit meant to produce a new and binding global treaty.
Return to top
ANDREW WALKER ON DEVELOPMENT
The final day of the summit was dominated by food, and a new approach to tackling hunger. It involves less emphasis on food aid and more on promoting the development of agriculture.
And there is money on the table to fund the strategy – $20bn. Campaigners here generally welcomed the basic idea, but have reservations about whether the money being offered is enough and whether it is genuinely new.
The big concern they always have whenever the G8 offers aid for something is whether the money will be diverted from other development programmes.
Most say that in the immediate aftermath of the news, they don’t know. But they will be poring over the figures to see if they can work it out.
On the overall aid budget there was a great deal of criticism of some G8 countries ahead of the summit for falling behind on commitments they made at Gleneagles in 2005. Max Lawson of Oxfam says that European G8 countries made the biggest promises. But apart from the UK, he says, they are not on track to implement the aid increases they said they would by 2010.
One of the communiques issued at this summit reiterates the importance of the Gleneagles commitments. But campaigners say some G8 countries are almost certain to fall short.
Return to top
</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.