DOWNSIDE LEGACY AT TWO DEGREES OF PRESIDENT CLINTON
SECTION: RUSSIA
SUBSECTION: EUROPEAN ECONOMY
Revised 8/20/99

 

EUROPE - Economy

The Wall Street Journal 4/7/99 James Dorsey "...A former Israeli intelligence agent seems an unlikely player in the struggle to exploit the vast untapped pools of crude oil and natural gas in Central Asia that the Soviet Union failed to extract when it controlled the region. Now that countries in the area have won their independence, powerful forces, including Russia, Iran and the U.S., are waging a battle to win part of this natural wealth. And 53-year-old Yosef A. Maiman possesses probably the one key to success in the region: the ear of one of its autocratic leaders. For the past few years, Mr. Maiman has served as the right-hand man on energy matters to President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan, home to the world's third-largest natural-gas reserves. In this role, Mr. Maiman has wittingly or unwittingly furthered the geopolitical goals of both the U.S. and Israel. How? By nudging the Turkmen leader to bypass Russia and Iran in building the country's main gas-export pipeline. The race to find a market for Turkmen gas, and a way to get it there, has picked up great speed of late. Mr. Maiman was the behind-the-scenes player in the $2.5 billion agreement that Mr. Niyazov signed in February with PSG International to build an export pipeline between Turkmenistan and Turkey. PSG is a joint venture between Bechtel Enterprises, a unit of Bechtel Group Inc., and General Electric Co,'s finance arem, GE Capital Services. Mr. Maiman acted as the intermediary between the Turkmenis and the U.S. firms. The contract represents a victory for the U.S. The companies involved are both American. And for Washington, the pipeline deal freezes out Russia and Iran, which Mr. Niyazov had been reluctant to challenge. Russia and Iran quickly denounced the project. In early February, Russian gas monopoly RAO Gazprom teamed up with Italy's ENI SpA and Dutch financial backer ABN-Amro Holding NV to build a competing gas pipeline across the black Sea from Russia to Turkey....."

Russia Reform Monitor, No. 316, September 22, 1997 American Foreign Policy Council, Washington, D.C. Big Clinton Donor Met With Korzhakov to Fund Yeltsin Campaign "..."A major Democratic Party donor met secretly in 1995 with top aides to Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and discussed funneling $100 million into Yeltsin's 1996 presidential campaign in exchange for Russian support of his proposed oil pipeline through Central Asia," the Los Angeles Times reports, citing classified CIA documents, confidential congressional depositions and other sources. "Roger Tamraz, who was also seeking U.S. governmental support for his pipeline, then informed his contacts at the CIA that he planned to tell President Clinton about his efforts to fund Yeltsin's campaign, according to the CIA documents. Some White House officials warned that Clinton should not get close to Tamraz [who is wanted in Lebanon for an alleged $200 million embezzlement scheme] . . . However, then-Democratic National Chairman Donald L. Fowler intervened on Tamraz's behalf, according to CIA documents. In all, Tamraz contributed $300,000 to state and federal Democratic organizations during the 1996 election campaign. Tamraz ultimately met six times with Clinton--including four after his clandestine meeting with the Russians--in large receptions and more intimate gatherings." But Tamraz says he didn't discuss the Yeltsin fundraising scheme with Clinton...."

Freeper flamefront notes: William Dorich author of the 1992 book "Kosovo" describes many trillions of dollars of value to resources.

Freeper bets lists: "...Black Sea Regional Energy Centre:

Oil Sector

Crude Oil Pipeline Burgas (Bulgaria) - Alexandroupolis (Greece)

Crude Oil Pipeline Thessaloniki (Greece) - Skopje (the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)

 

Category B

Oil Products Pipeline Skopje (the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)

Thessaloniki (Greece) - Skopje (the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)

Crude Oil Pipeline Burgas (Bulgaria) - Vlorë (Albania)

Gas Sector

Category A

Transmission capacity increase of the pipeline Romania - Bulgaria - Turkey

Improvement of the existing transmission network in Bulgaria

 

Category B

Completion of the main gas pipeline project in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

Pipeline connection from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to Albania

Interconnection of the Romanian and Hungarian gas transmission systems

Category C

Pipeline connection from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to Kosovo

Interconnection of the gas transmission systems of Romania and the Republic of Moldova

Pipeline connection from Albania to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

Diversification study to supply Balkan countries with Algerian and Tunisian gas through Italy

Interconnections between Greece and Albania..."

newsmax.com 6/9/99 Carl Limbacher and Caron Grich "...If President Clinton were to level with the American people, he might just explain NATO's first hot war by using a variation of his old campaign theme: "It's the global economy, stupid." Because NATO's entry into the Balkans, though thus far an abject failure in terms of the mission's ostensible goals, places the West, and especially Western Europe, on the doorstep of resources so vast that the move could mean decades worth of economic well-being for member nations. Ponder this nearly two year-old observation from the New York Times, reported when a U.S. security force in the Balkans was only a twinkle in Madeleine Albright's eye: "Forget mutual funds, commodity futures and corporate mergers. Forget South African Diamonds, European currencies and Thai stocks. The most concentrated mass of untapped wealth known to exist anywhere is in the oil and gas fields beneath the Caspian (Sea) and lands around it.... The strategic implications of this bonanza hypnotize Western security planners as completely as the finances transfix oil executives." (New York Times -- September 21, 1997) Or this, from a conservative think tank the year before: "The vast expanses of the former Soviet Union harbor oil and gas riches which will be crucial to funding the global economy in the next century. The huge oil reserves, estimated at over 25 billion barrels under the Caspian Sea and in the central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are similar to those in Kuwait and larger than those in Alaska's Northern Slope and the North Sea combined." (Ariel Cohen, Senior Policy Analyst, The Heritage Foundation - January 25, 1996)...."

newsmax.com 6/9/99 Carl Limbacher and Caron Grich "....Control over these energy resources and export routes out of the Eurasian hinterland is quickly becoming one of the central issues in post Cold War politics," Cohen added, without noting that Caspian oil played a major role a pre-Cold War geo-strategic conflict as well....Ever since the break-up of the old Soviet Union, the West has had its eye on the oil fields of Central Asia. And security for pipelines carrying the crude out is a priority concern that could make or break billions of dollars already invested by U.S oil companies like Mobil, Chevron, Amoco and others. ut to get Caspian oil to the trillion petro-dollar market of Western Europe, planners need alternatives to old pipeline routes that traversed Iran and Russia. That means development of the huge Eurasian reserves must focus on the corridor between those two potentially hostile regions. Almost all roads lead to Baku, Azerbaijan, the Caspian seaport believed to be sitting on trillions of dollars of untapped crude. 12 energy companies have entered into a $7.5 billion consortium, the Azerbaijani International Operating Company (AIOC). Five are U.S. based: Penzoil, Unocal, McDermott and Exxon, and Amoco, now merged with British Petroleum.

Stratfor, Inc. 6/15/99 "...Competition between Russia and NATO for influence on Russia's periphery will undoubtedly accelerate following their confrontation in Kosovo. Besides the Baltics and Ukraine, competition between Russia and NATO is already fierce in the Caucasus. Increasing tension in this already unstable region may drive oil companies operating in Central Asia to look elsewhere for pipeline routes to move their oil. In particular, they are likely to look south, to Iran....Besides Kosovo, the Baltics, and Ukraine, another area of heated contention between Russia and the West is in the Caucasus. There, Russia is increasingly cooperating militarily with Armenia and is believed to be cooperating politically with Abkhaz separatists, to counterbalance NATO influence in Azerbaijan and Georgia. Complicating matters, the wild card Chechnya is forging its own path with the aid of Middle Eastern interests. Caught in the middle are international oil companies, who are attempting to cash in on Central Asia's oil wealth. The main pipelines for Central Asian oil -- the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline and the Baku-Supsa pipeline -- pass through the Caucasus and are vulnerable to regional unrest. The older and larger Baku-Novorossiysk line was ruptured by an explosion early on June 14, apparently during an attempt by Chechen rebels to steal oil from the route. The pipeline has been illegally tapped in the past. Flow through the pipeline has also been halted repeatedly by the Chechen government, on the grounds that Russia has failed to pay fees for use of the portion of the pipeline that passes through Chechen territory. The recently opened Baku-Supsa route, while touted as a safer route for avoiding the Chechen instability, also quite poignantly avoids Russia altogether -- undermining Russian influence on the region's oil and Russian revenue from that oil...."

Times 6/14/99 Richard Boudreaux "...-On Day One of NATO's peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, Dragan Radakovic stood at the edge of Serbia's largest coal mine and watched it pass from one army's control to another's with clockwork precision. Serbian infantrymen who had guarded the Belacevic open pit mine during 16 months of guerrilla war pulled out at 8 a.m. Saturday. Their army's withdrawal from Kosovo was supposed to be tightly synchronized with the arrival of NATO-led troops to pacify the province. Instead, the advancing foot soldiers the mine director saw in his binoculars were from the Kosovo Liberation Army. Much to his alarm, the ethnic Albanian separatists who looked all but defeated several weeks ago had returned in force to seize one of the mine's two giant pits, its administration building and four employees. The swift takeover of a strategic economic target shows the KLA's determination to move into the vacuum between the departing Serbs and a lumbering, 48,000-strong NATO-led force already slowed by scattered Serbian resistance and feuds with Russian peacekeepers. About 350 guerrillas are believed to have participated in the mine takeover six miles northwest of the provincial capital, Pristina...."

Associated Press - via canoe.com 6/16/99 Tom Raum "…Sandy Berger, the president's national security adviser, talked Tuesday with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to discuss a compromise that could allow the Russians to participate as long in Kosovo as their commander reported to the general of another country, who would report to the NATO peacekeeping command, said P.J. Crowley, a White House spokesman. "We have pointed to Bosnia as a model," Crowley said, noting that the same sort of Russian-NATO command linkage has been used there…."

Itar-Tass 6/14/99 "...Nikolai Mikhailov, Russia's First Deputy Minister of Defence and State Secretary, in his remarks during talks between Colonel-General Zhang Wannian, Deputy Chairman of the Central Military Council of the People's Republic of China, and the Command of Russia's Pacific Fleet, has stated that "Russia's strategic co-operation with China and India will rise to a qualitatively new level soon". The Russian Defence Ministry official pointed out that "the events in Yugoslavia prompted the adoption of necessary measures in the strengthening of Russia's defence capability and in a quest for strategic partners in accomplishment of this important task. China and India are such partners now".,,,,:

New York Daily News 6/17/99 Sidney Zion "...We hate your guts." This was my hello from Mikhail Yuriev, deputy chairman of the Russian parliament, who in the next breath assured me that it was nothing personal. And without taking a breath added, "We like to see you dead." This warm response was in answer to a simple question: "How do Russians feel about America in light of the war over Kosovo?" When I smiled, Yuriev insisted that he and his country were dead serious. "The day you started bombing, the polls showed that 63% here would go to war for Serbia. They'd do it today. We hate your guts - understand this, America." ...."

Reuters/RUSSIA TODAY 6/16/99 "…Russia's Duma urged President Boris Yeltsin on Thursday to sack his special Balkans envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin, whom it accused of betraying Moscow's national interests in Yugoslavia. In a non-binding resolution, the opposition-dominated Duma said an agreement between Russia and the Western powers paving the way for an end to the Yugoslav war amounted to capitulation by Belgrade and the occupation of Kosovo by NATO troops. "The defeat of a strategic ally of Russia in the Balkans has sharply worsened Russia's geopolitical position and created a serious threat to its national security," the resolution said…."

Itar-Tass 6/16/99 "…Threats issued by the so- called Kosovo Liberation Army to Russian peacekeepers confirm the terrorist nature of this organisation, a high-ranking Russian Defence Ministry official said on Wednesday. Under the U.N. Security Council resolution, KLA should be demilitarised simultaneously with the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army and police units from the province in order not to create a security vacuum, the official said. Having assumed an essential role in the operation, NATO has been flouting its obligations, the official said, adding that there is open NATO connivance for Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo. If KLA is not disarmed, this will inevitably lead to the creation of other armed groupings in Kosovo in order to protect other ethnic groups in the province, the official said…."

6/16/99 AFP "…The designation of Russian peacekeepers by the Kosovo Liberation Army as an "enemy force" was a "declaration of war" on Moscow's Kosovo contingent, a foreign ministry spokesman said Wednesday. "It is an unprecedented declaration, it can only be taken as a declaration of war on Russian peacekeeping forces," said the official, who asked not to be named…."

UPI 6/29/99 Martin Sieff "...U.S. policymakers have moved to reassure the Turkish government they still are committed to construction of a pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan across Turkey to the Mediterranean Sea. Earlier this month, the Clinton administration authorized a feasibility study by the U.S. Trade and Development Agency on the possibility of building an oil pipeline across the Balkans from the port of Burgos in Bulgaria across Macedonia and Albania to the Mediterranean. Reports of this study provoked a wave of concern in Turkey that such a trans-Balkans pipeline might mean the United States was turning its back on the proposed pipeline from Baku to Ceyhan in southeast Turkey on the Mediterranean. But U.S. government officials told UPI today that while the trans- Balkans pipeline or some other additional pipeline was likely to be built, Washington remained firmly committed to the Baku-Ceyhan project to pump oil from southern Caspian oil fields controlled by Azerbaijan. U.S. officials said the trans-Balkan pipeline route will be studied as a way to transport oil pumped along a route from other Caspian Sea oil fields controlled by Kazakhstan to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk by the proposed Caspian Pipeline Consortium pipeline....

AP 6/30/99 "...Albanian miners in the rocky, pine-covered hills of northern Kosovo say it wasn't politics, religion or even ethnicity that started the war with the Serbs. They say it was what lies deep in the ground under their homes: more lead and zinc than can be found anywhere else in Europe. "The Serbs started this war for economic reasons," said Smajl Tahiri, who began working in the Trepca mines when he was a teenager. "But we fought to liberate the country." Tahiri said he thinks liberation has come. Soon, he said, ethnic Albanians will take back Trepca jobs that were lost a decade ago, when miners were punished for leading protests after Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic, took almost total control of Kosovo. Before that, Kosovo had been an autonomous province in Serbia. Two weeks ago, a NATO-led force moved in to police a U.N. peace deal that guarantees that Kosovo will be autonomous once again. But Trepca has remained idle, its mines and factories tightly guarded by French peacekeepers. Although final figures weren't available, Serb general manager Novak Bijelic estimated that even at limited production, the mines and the processing plant would post sales of $370 million for 1998...."

Stratfor.com 7/2/99 "...2130 GMT, 990702 - U.S. Pressures Would Be Allies in Caspian Upon concluding his visit to Azerbaijan in late June, special adviser to the U.S. President and the Secretary of State for Caspian Issues, Richard Morningstar, said moving ahead with the Azerbaijan-Turkmenistan gas pipeline was more urgent than resolving the legal status of the Caspian Sea. In his comments on the talks on the Caspian issue between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, Morningstar said it was essential that the two Caspian states agree as soon as possible on the matter of the Transcaspian gas pipeline that should transport oil from Turkmenistan to Turkey via the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. "If they do not reach the agreement in the near future, other parties will appear and enter the Turkish market earlier, and this will harm both parties," Morningstar said. He also stressed that the pipeline issue was more important than the delimitation of the legal status of the Caspian Sea, and that the two issues should not be associated...."

Russia Today 7/3/99 Reuters "... Partners in a planned $2 billion natural gas pipeline between Turkmenistan and Turkey will sign a framework agreement next month finalizing their contributions to the project, a Turkmen official said. "The signing of the Project Development Agreement is planned for July 15," a spokesman for the Ministry of Oil and Gas Industry and Mineral Resources told Reuters....."

Original Sources (www.originalsources.com) 7/16/99 "…I called the office of a Republican senator who shall be temporarily nameless, and inquired if the Senator knew of a provision recently voted on which, according to an e-mail I received, "names Yugoslvia a 'terrorist state'. The aide, who had a Croatian name, said without hesitation that I was referring to S 1234, Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2000, section 525 of the bill which did indeed list Yugoslavia as a terrorist state, along with Cuba, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Iran, Sudan, or Syria….. These draconian sanctions, which are guaranteed to kill hundreds of thousands of people in a nation which is now about 90% unemployed because American bombers destroyed most of its means of production, will remain in place, according to the bill, until the President "certifies" that: 1. The representatives of the successor states to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia have successfully negotiated the division of assets and liabilities and all other succession issues following the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia; ….In effect these provisions destroy totally the G-8 agreement that Milosevic and the NATO nations signed in early June…. We eagerly dismembered a socialist system to transform Yugoslavia into a cluster of weak extremist principalities incapable of charting an independent course of self-development. The International Monetary Fund will help to complete the process by making all of the natural and mineral wealth of Yugoslavia accessible to multinational corporate exploitation. Impoverished, Yugoslavia still has a proud record of a 90% literacy rate and a very skilled Serbian population - who will now be forced to work at subsistence wages…."

stratfor.com 7/12/99 "…0010 GMT, 990710 – Azerbaijan Forces Pipeline Issue Azerbaijani oil exporters have threatened to re-route Caspian oil around Russia due to the continuing disruptions caused by events in Chechnya. The Azeri state oil company SOCAR said the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline has been inoperable for a total of 95 days this year, causing significant financial loss. The pipeline runs through Chechen territory and has been closed due to numerous attacks, the most recent being an explosion which forced its closure for several weeks….As relations between Moscow and Washington continue to deteriorate on a strategic level, and as the situation in Chechnya becomes increasingly unstable on a tactical level, the prospect of eliminating Russia from the oil transport picture becomes more enticing to both the U.S. government and Western oil companies. The issue is being forced -- and Turkey may come out the loser -- as Western oil companies are no longer willing to wait for Baku-Ceyhan to come to fruition, or to sit in limbo and wait for conditions to improve in Chechnya. There is a marked shift to make enlargement of the Baku-Supsa route and a Trans-Balkan pipeline an imperative, and to close this issue once and for all…."

Carnigie Institute Report of a Meeting Held November 4-5, 1997 Freeper dirtboy "...The status of the Caspian Sea as the world's greatest untapped reserve of crude oil has opened the region to intense geopolitical and economic competition. The entrance of multinational corporate interests and of new state actors such as Turkey, Iran, and the United States threatens Russia's traditional hegemony in that area while also enhancing the potential for purely local conflicts to spill over to regional and international levels.....Concern was expressed about the potential for new conflicts to erupt, particularly in Dagestan. Located in a strategically vital area that borders Azerbaijan, Georgia, Chechnya, and the Caspian Sea itself, Dagestan is also one of the most destitute areas of the Russian Federation. Tensions among its fourteen major ethnic groups, and between local communities and Russian military personnel, have been exacerbated by an unstable government and rampant crime. The Chechen blockade of Dagestan border trade has only added fuel to the fire. Among many participants there was a strong sense that, should Dagestan implode, as seems possible, regional stability would be severely challenged. ...."

San Jose Mecury News 8/16/99 Lori Montgomery "…- To Americans, the order seemed simple: Report to work by July 15 and you can keep your jobs. But to Serbs, terrified victims of a new rash of Kosovo violence, the order might as well have called them to the moon. The American-led committee that runs the Klokat spa and mineral-water plant recently welcomed to work scores of ethnic Albanians who met the deadline. And it officially fired 186 Serbs -- many of whom had begged for a military escort so they could reclaim their jobs. ``We kept giving these Serb workers another chance and another chance to come to work,'' said U.S. Army Lt. Jason Green, one of two Americans on the Klokat committee. ``They just never did show up.'' ….Since late June, when U.S. peacekeeping troops took over the Klokat plant, Brig. Gen. John Craddock, the top U.S. military commander in Kosovo, has fired the Serb general manager and filled top posts with ethnic Albanians. In short order, the workforce shifted dramatically -- from 198 Serbs and 52 ethnic Albanians before the war, to about 140 ethnic Albanians and fewer than 30 Serbs today. The Americans defend the changes as representative of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians have long made up more than 90 percent of the population. They point out that the Klokat plant is operating with a mixed workforce -- a minor coup at a time when more than a quarter of Kosovo's 200,000 Serbs have fled the province. But bitter Serb employees say the Americans cost them their jobs. …"

AP 8/19/99 "…A border dispute between Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan must not hinder construction of a gas pipeline across the Caspian Sea, U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said here Thursday. A dispute over how to divide the Caspian's territory has stalled work on the four-country project to bring Turkmen gas to Western markets, and Washington is trying to broker a settlement…..After Thursday's talks, Niyazov and Joseph Grandmeison, the director of the U.S. Agency for Trade and Development, signed an agreement providing Turkmenistan with a $150,000 grant for consulting services to draft legal documents for the project…."