Foreign Policy Issues for the Coming Months

The key issues that will dominate Russia's foreign relations agenda are the approaching EU-Russia summit and the continuing negotiations on Kosovo's independence. Both issues appear to be in various degrees of gridlock.

Russia continues to oppose the plan of Marti Ahtisaari that virtually does not account for the opinion of Serbia on the issue of independence of its province, Kosovo. Russia insists that resolution 1244 regarding Kosovo, in particular the guarantees it must provide to the Serbian minority such as an opportunity to safely return to their homes, has not been implemented fully. In recent Security Council hearings, the majority of the Western partners have supported the notion that resolution 1244 has been satisfied and the situation in Kosovo has improved. Yet, Russia has go as far as saying any attempts by the US to force a vote on Kosovo's independence in the Security Council will see a Russian veto, a sign that negotiations will drag longer. The UN Security Council has sent a commission into Kosovo to investigate in detail the situation. The outlook for a successful resolution of the Kosovo issue in the near months is unlikely.

With regard to the EU, Kommersant reports that:

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson set a grim tone three days before the talks in Luxembourg by saying that EU-Russia relations were at their lowest point since the Cold War. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his counterparts in the EU had to play down this pessimistic rhetoric.

European Union officials said on Monday they hoped to resolve a dispute holding up a partnership agreement with Russia before a summit next month.

After new talks with in Luxembourg, Russia stressed its desire to conclude the new pact to cover energy, trade, economic cooperation and human rights.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said after the talks that the parties had reached some progress in settling the dispute, but there was still a lot to be done.

The Laboratory 12 poison plot

I am so sick of this theme, and the chances of it being solved are slim, the chances that the solution will seem believable are even slimmer. But here is an interesting article from The Sunday Times (extract from a book by Martin Sixsmith):

The more I probed, the more I was becoming convinced that Litvinenko had been poisoned by a group of people independent of the Kremlin but with close connections to the Russian security forces.

The sophisticated planning behind the plot and the evidence of the poison factory strongly suggested an FSB-style operation. This did not necessarily mean the FSB had been acting in its own interests or on its own initiative; the security forces were so fragmented and out of control in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that individuals and groups within them were constantly taking on moonlighting jobs on behalf of paying customers.

...

The letter harked back to an unprecedented act of public defiance that Litvinenko organised nine years ago after he and five other officers in an FSB hit squad, known as URPO, had been ordered to assassinate Boris Berezovsky, the immensely powerful Russian billionaire.

Far from killing him, Litvinenko had alerted Berezovsky and, at his behest, had dragooned the URPO men into denouncing the assassination order at a press conference. The act of rebellion was quickly crushed and led ultimately to Litvinenko’s flight to London — and Berezovsky’s.

Litvinenko left a legacy of seething anger not only among the superiors he had denounced but among the URPO officers who believed he had destroyed their careers — and almost their lives — by dragging them into his revolt.

This essentially brings us back to why Litvinenko was in London in the first place. I am not providing further comments, I have provided them in an opinion in November of 2006. And it turns out I was not far off from the truth. It is very unfortunate that Mr. Litvinenko's death was used by Mr. Berezovskiy as a PR stunt. It is more regrettable that European and US officials fell into this obvious trap.