IN FOCUS OF THE RUSSIAN PRESS

Kommersant: New Kyrgyz leaders hedging their bets; Vedomosti: World leaders discuss sanctions on Iran; Kommersant: Russia, U.S. continue disarmament race; RBC Daily: Russia delays jetliner deliveries to Iran because of U.S. sanctions.
Kommersant: New Kyrgyz leaders hedging their bets
Contrary to Moscow's expectations, the new Kyrgyz authorities plan to prolong the contract for the Manas base with the United States. The interim government, which used Russia's assistance at the most dangerous moment of the uprising in that Central Asian republic, has thus indicated that it will not abandon the country's multipronged foreign policy.
Kyrgyz interim government leader Roza Otunbayeva said after her Wednesday talks with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Blake that they "did not consider the question of the U.S. Manas base," which is key to military operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Blake told reporters he felt "optimistic about the steps it [the interim government] is already taking. The United States is prepared to help."
Shortly before the American official's visit, Otunbayeva told the AP that the agreement allowing the U.S. to use the Manas air base will be prolonged after the current one-year deal expires in July. "It will be automatically extended for the next year," she said.
The new Kyrgyz defense minister, Ismail Isakov, on Wednesday confirmed the new authorities' intention, which is in stark contrast to Moscow's expectations.
"The question of the Manas base has been decided; it will be closed," an informed source with links to the Kremlin told Kommersant earlier.
President Dmitry Medvedev also indicated as much during his meeting at the Brookings Institute. He said that Kurmanbek Bakiyev only had himself to blame and that failure to close the U.S. base, as he had promised to do, contributed to his downfall.
The question of the Manas base is of fundamental importance to Russia and was one of the main thorns in its relations with Bakiyev. Russia issued a gratis loan of $150 million and an easy loan of $300 million and wrote off Kyrgyzstan's $180-million debt only after Bakiyev had promised to close the base last year. But it suspended the transfers several months later, when it became clear that Bakiyev did not intend to honor his word.
Russia could again condition its assistance to the new Kyrgyz authorities on the Manas base, and open its purse only if they understand the issue as Moscow wants them to.
Meanwhile, the Kyrgyz interim government is not ready to put all its eggs in one basket. Russia's support expressed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on the second day of the uprising helped the opposition to turn the tide. But now that Bakiyev may pack it in, the winners have hinted that they would not abandon their country's multipronged foreign policy.
Several days before Robert Blake's visit, Otunbayeva met with Chinese ambassador Wang Kaiwen, who assured her of "Beijing's willingness to provide humanitarian aid to Kyrgyzstan."
Vedomosti: World leaders discuss sanctions on Iran
Barack Obama has announced China's readiness to support sanctions against Iran. If the sanctions are "humane," Russia might also support them.
China is prepared to start work on another Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran, the U.S. president said following his talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington, where a nuclear security summit was held. The president said he was sure that China would support tough sanctions.
This is the first time that Beijing's readiness to cooperate on sanctions at the Security Council has been announced at such a high level. However, Obama's remark was unilateral: the Chinese Foreign Ministry limited itself to the traditional cliche about the need for a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian issue.
According to The New York Times, Obama gave the Chinese leader a list of possible sanctions against Iran: no access to international loans, no investment by foreign companies in the country's energy sector, and tougher sanctions against companies controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which oversees Iran's nuclear program.
Some of the proposed measures were leaked to the U.S. press in March. It was reported then that senior officials could have their foreign bank accounts frozen and be banned from countries supporting the resolution. It was said that more banks, including the central bank, could be affected (two years ago the state-owned Bank Melli and Bank Saderot were put on this list).
Dmitry Medvedev, speaking at the Brookings Institute in Washington, made it clear that Russia is not against sanctions.
His words also implied that talks on sanctions were already underway. He said that Moscow opposes paralyzing sanctions because ordinary people would suffer as a result, which would be inhumane. Iran's behavior is wrong, it ignores steps taken to meet it halfway, the Russian president said, but we need to be clear about what we want to achieve. The United States, knowing Moscow's position, decided not to include restrictions on oil products exported to Iran in the resolution, the NYT claims citing a U.S. official.
The sanctions on the banks do not hurt the Iranian people.
In addition, Russia is concerned about the financing of the nuclear program. Energy sanctions, on the other hand, could affect the interests of ordinary people, says Vladimir Orlov, president of the Russian Center for Policy Studies (PIR center). Sanctions against Iran will be "less biting than is claimed now," the expert believes and does not rule out their adoption before the end of April.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in an interview with the Iranian Press TV on Tuesday night, urged Obama not to threaten Iran and promised to send the American president a letter detailing their proposals.
Kommersant: Russia, U.S. continue disarmament race
Relations between Moscow and Washington have improved to such an extent that neither needs stockpiles of weapons-grade nuclear materials anymore.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the latest nuclear security summit in Washington that Moscow had decided to shut down its last weapons-grade plutonium production reactor.
Before that, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed a protocol on each party reprocessing 34 metric tons of surplus weapons-grade plutonium. Russia is to spend $2.5 billion on the project, and Washington will contribute $400 million.
Both countries have been negotiating the reprocessing of weapons-grade plutonium since the 1990s. Although Moscow and Washington signed a number of interstate agreements, no practical work followed.
Nevertheless, in the early 1990's, Russian scientists proposed the two most promising ways of recycling nuclear material. Under the first method, nuclear materials are mixed with other radioactive waste and buried after special reprocessing, designed to hinder any possible military use. The second method makes it possible to reprocess them into nuclear power plant fuel.
This latter method is aimed to obtain uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, while other options, including sending them into space, dissolving them in the world's oceans and deep-level burial, were all deemed inappropriate. Mixed burial requires new technology, while using MOX fuel means operational reactors have to be reequipped.
The incomplete BN-800 reactor at the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant in Russia's Sverdlovsk Region is the only local MOX fuel production facility scheduled to be commissioned in 2014.
The Nuclear Reactor Research Institute in Dimitrovgrad in the Volga Federal District will develop fuel assemblies for the reactor.
The ADE-2 underground plutonium production reactor, due to be shut down on President Medvedev's orders, was commissioned on January 25, 1964, at the Mining and Chemical Combine in Zheleznogorsk, Russia's Krasnoyarsk Territory.
The reactor produced 500 kg of weapons-grade plutonium annually and from 1966 also generated heat and electricity for Zheleznogorsk, which has a population of 100,000.
In 1995, the enterprise stopped producing weapons-grade nuclear materials under a state defense contract. The reactor was shut down from June 1, 2009, and its fuel reserve is to expire in the summer of 2010.
Although no accidents were recorded during the reactor's operation, it was briefly shut down 13 times in 2007 following various technical mishaps.
The reactor's closure does not mean that Russia will be unable to resume weapons-grade plutonium production, if need be. Moscow does not need to build a new reactor because it can utilize technology in the BN-type reactors at the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant.
RBC Daily: Russia delays jetliner deliveries to Iran because of U.S. sanctions
Pratt & Whitney, an American aircraft engine manufacturer whose products are widely used in both civil and military aircraft, may become involved in another scandal linked with Russian civil aircraft exports.
Russia's aircraft engine manufacturer Perm Motor Plant and Pratt & Whitney jointly developed a new engine for the Tu-204SM twin-engine medium-haul airliner. The first five aircraft were ordered by Iran, and now delivery has been delayed because of U.S. sanctions.
Pratt & Whitney which owns a stake in Perm Motors has notified its Russian partner that it will be difficult to obtain a U.S. State Department foreign-economic cooperation license in connection with the sale of the first five Tu-204SMs with PS-90A2 engines to Iran.
Previously, it was believed that the first five jetliners would be delivered to Tehran under a 2009 contract between Iran Air Tours, a subsidiary of flag carrier Iran Air, and Ilyushin Finance Co., the largest Russian aircraft sales and leasing company.
A contract for the delivery of 15 Tu-204SMs to Moscow-based Atlant-Soyuz Airlines, who operate domestic and international passenger and freight flights, was signed during the 2009 International Aviation and Space Salon (MAKS) in Zhukovsky near Moscow.
Alexei Fyodorov, CEO of the government-owned United Aircraft Corporation (UAC), said Atlant-Soyuz expected to receive its first Tu-204SM airliners in late 2011. UAC is the umbrella company that consolidates state-owned and private aircraft construction companies. It holds manufacturing and designing companies and companies that sell military, civilian, transport, and unmanned aircraft.
"I am not prepared to assess the feasibility of our deliveries to Iran. Although Iran Air Tours was scheduled to become the first customer, we have now come to another decision and have coordinated it with Atlant-Soyuz, our initial customer," Fyodorov said.
The first production units are being built to Atlant-Soyuz specifications. They differ somewhat from the Iranian order.
The Iran Air Tours contract was not in effect because it was not finalized, Fyodorov said. Moscow and Pratt & Whitney are currently holding consultations on the delivery of PS-90A2 engines to Iran.
"Interchangeable engines developed without Pratt & Whitney assistance will probably be delivered to Iran. Engine substitution requires no changes in aircraft design," Fyodorov said.
"Six engines will be manufactured and installed on prototype planes for subsequent tests this year. There are plans to manufacture 40-50 engines annually, while current output totals 25-30 engines," said Perm Motors managing director Mikhail Dicheskul.
This is not the first time that Pratt & Whitney has hindered Russian equipment deliveries. The U.S. decided not to negotiate PW-207K helicopter-engine deliveries from Canada after the August 2008 Russian-Georgian conflict over the breakaway province of South Ossetia, citing organizational changes.
This thwarted the test program of the Mi-38 cargo helicopter.
"Given this relationship, the situation does not make one optimistic about prospects for successful cooperation," Russian Helicopters CEO Andrei Shibitov recently said.
Pratt & Whitney declined to comment on the issue.
April 15, 2010
RIA Novosti
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