-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a prelude to war! Vladimir Putin has signalled that the West will be a rival rather than a partner, Richard Beeston writes Putin's empire begins to growl The bear awakens Putin: expected to win presidential election FROM the northern Pacific coast to the Caucasus and beyond, Moscow's new leadership has embarked on an aggressive foreign policy, which has set it firmly on a collision course with Western interests. In a series of actions over the past few days, the new Government of Vladimir Putin, Russia's acting President, has moved to bolster its military, befriend repressive regimes and put the West on notice that it will be a rival rather than a partner. Despite receiving a cautious welcome in the West, where Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, praised Mr Putin this week for his open-mindedness, his actions have sent a very different signal. Mr Putin, a former KGB agent who is expected to win next month's presidential elections virtually unopposed, seems in the space of only a month in power to have embarked on a much more aggressive path than his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. Igor Ivanov, his Foreign Minister, visited North Korea yesterday and signed a friendship pact with the regime of Kim Jong Il, a pariah in the international community. Today he will follow up that move by visiting Japan, where Russia has indicated that it will not honour a commitment by Mr Yeltsin to resolve the dispute over the Kurile Islands, territory seized by Stalin at the end of the Second World War. Russia is further making its presence felt in the region with the delivery, expected this month, of a guided-missile destroyer to China, the latest addition of sophisticated Russian hardware to Beijing's growing naval arsenal. The sudden activity in the Far East has been matched by other initiatives closer to Moscow. The Kremlin has just assigned the sole right to extract and exploit Chechnya's oil and gas reserves to Rosneft, Russia's last state-owned oil giant. Last week the presidential Security Council passed a new Russian military doctrine, which relaxes the rules of engagement of Moscow's nuclear forces. >From next month, when the doctrine comes into effect, the Russian head of state will be allowed to use atomic weapons in conflicts that do not necessarily threaten Russia's territory. The change in policy is regarded as an important shift when coupled with other moves on the military front. Yesterday Russia successfully test fired a Topol-M ballistic missile, its new-generation inter-continental weapon, which was launched from the Plesetsk site in northern Russia and hit the Kamchatka peninsula more than 5,000 miles away in the Pacific. Mr Putin also promised recently to double military expenditure after his campaign in Chechnya. The build-up comes as relations with Nato remain largely frozen. A forthcoming visit by Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, the Nato Secretary-General, to Moscow has been postponed. No date is likely to be set until after the Russian presidential elections on March 26. The other cause for concern in the West last week was the seizure in the Gulf by the US Navy of the Russian tanker Volgoneft-147, which was found to be smuggling Iraqi oil, thus helping Saddam Hussein to break UN sanctions. Despite the concern caused by Russia's recent actions, Western policymakers said that it was still too early to tell if Mr Putin would emerge as a friendly or hostile leader during his rule, which is likely to run for at least the next five years. "Part of the problem is that we know so little about him," one senior American official said. "What we do know is that he will be much more difficult to influence than Yeltsin; our leverage is much weaker." Britain is hoping that a visit to Moscow this month by Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, will help to establish where Mr Putin is heading. **COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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