Eurasia Daily Monitor, DC
May 25 2007
MOSCOW CONFRONTS THE WEST OVER CFE TREATY AT OSCE
By Vladimir Socor
Friday, May 25, 2007
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov Russian officials
are intensifying their warnings about scuttling the Treaty on
Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE), unless the West brings the
adapted but unratified treaty into force while accepting the
continued presence of Russian troops in Georgia and Moldova. Apart
from that goal, Moscow aims to extend the treaty’s applicability to
the three Baltic states, so as to limit possible deployments of
Western forces there in emergencies. The Baltic states are not
signatory to the unratified treaty, but would sign it upon its coming
into force.
Given multiple Russian violations of both the 1990 original and the
1999-adapted treaty, however, the latest threats to abandon the
treaty unless it is ratified do not sound credible, even if
reiterated at higher decibels. Thus far, only Russia and three other
members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (Belarus, Ukraine,
Kazakhstan) have ratified the adapted treaty.
Following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s April 26 warning to that
effect, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov took the warning to
the OSCE — the CFE Treaty’s custodian organization — in Vienna on
May 23, concurrently with Putin’s bilateral visit to Austria, also on
May 23, and backed up by louder warnings from First Deputy Prime
Minister Sergei Ivanov in Moscow that same day.
Addressing a special joint session of the OSCE’s Permanent Council
and its talk-shop Forum for Security Cooperation (FSC), Lavrov
reiterated Putin’s warnings and went on to propose the holding of a
special international conference of state-parties to the CFE Treaty.
Putin and Lavrov had coordinated this initiative with U.S. Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit to Moscow the preceding
week. Rice mentioned the possible conference approvingly though
cryptically in her remarks to Moscow media during the visit. It is
not yet clear how the Russians hope to shape the agenda and
composition of such a conference in order to obtain satisfaction from
it.
For his part, Ivanov warned on May 23 that Russia would suspend its
fulfillment of the treaty’s mutual obligations regarding onsite
inspections of forces by other state-parties and pre-notification of
military movements. Russia would comply with its side of such
obligations only after the treaty is ratified and brought into force,
Ivanov declared for NATO and EU countries to hear.
For a novel argument, Moscow is sharply questioning the establishment
of U.S. military installations in Romania and Bulgaria. Mostly
located near the Black Sea coast, the installations are designed for
logistical support to U.S. and allied forces en route to Asia for
ongoing or contingency operations. Putin rhetorically criticized the
creation of those bases in his April 26 Moscow speech and again in
Vienna on May 23, as did Lavrov at the OSCE that day and Ivanov in
Moscow.
The Russians are not seriously attempting to argue that deployment of
those U.S. forces in Romania and Bulgaria violate any CFE quotas or
ceilings. Russian objections seem designed for political effect on
two counts: First, to suggest one element of a deal whereby Moscow
would desist from raising that issue if the West accepts a continuing
Russian military presence in Moldova and Georgia. And second, to
demonstrate that Russia wants to be consulted on basic issues of hard
security affecting new member countries of NATO (Romania and Bulgaria
in this case).
In the OSCE’s special meeting, Western countries properly ignored
Moscow’s polemics regarding Romania and Bulgaria while responding
firmly on the CFE treaty-related issues. Statements by U.S.
Ambassador Julie Finley, the European Union collectively, and NATO
member countries collectively as state-parties to the CFE Treaty
addressed Putin’s and Lavrov’s warnings. The Western statements used
similar wording reminding Russia that the remaining Istanbul
commitments relating to Georgia and Moldova must be fulfilled as a
precondition to ratification of the CFE treaty. At the same time, the
Western statements offered to overcome the differences through
negotiation and cooperation with Russia in the OSCE, the NATO-Russia
Council, or the newly envisaged special international conference.
Technically, Moscow insists that ratification of the 1999-adapted CFE
Treaty is not conditional on the withdrawal of Russian troops from
bases in Georgia and Moldova. In fact, the linkage between
ratification and troop withdrawal is explicit in the agreements on
the treaty’s adaptation, signed at the OSCE’s 1999 Istanbul summit
(the Istanbul Commitments). Moscow does not recognize those
commitments as part of the CFE treaty, but is in fact withdrawing
from its Akhalkalaki and Batumi bases and is scheduled to close them
during 2007 and 2008, respectively, under bilateral agreements with
Georgia. However, Russia retains the Gudauta base (in the
Abkhaz-controlled territory of Georgia), which was to have been
closed in 2001 in accordance with the 1999 treaty-adaptation
agreement. The latter does not apply to the `peacekeeping’ troops as
such, however.
Moscow apparently hopes that NATO and EU countries would tolerate the
arsenals of heavy weaponry in the possession of unlawful forces in
Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Karabakh. Designated as
`unaccounted-for treaty-limited equipment,’ it involves categories of
weapons subjected to CFE treaty quotas or bans, but hidden from the
state-parties to the treaty (other than Russia, which delivered those
weapons) in those enclaves. Ratification of the adapted treaty would
be a farcical exercise without resolving this problem.
(Interfax, Itar-Tass, May 23; OSCE Permanent Council session
documents, May 23)
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress