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Libya Gets Russia's Due
// Vladimir Putin completes his visit to Tripoli
Russian President Vladimir Putin reached an agreement with leader of the Libyan Revolution Muammar Gaddafi that Russia would write off Libya's $4.5-billion debt, if it would buy Russian automated technology worth that much. Kommersant specialist Andrey Kolesnikov, and several members of the Russian delegation, thinks that the Libyans had their way in the negotiations, rather than the Russians.
The Russian president had a late, heavy supper with Muammar Gaddafi the evening before. There was no choice – Gaddafi's toast lasted along time. And it wasn't a toast to anyone's health. Rather, the Libyan leader criticized the United States for its recent unipolarity. Gaddafi had raised the topic several hours earlier when he suggested that Putin view the ruins of the house bombed by the Americans in which, history is told, Gaddafi's adopted daughter found her final resting place. The Libyan leader not only pursued that topic all evening, it was the main theme of his life. Putin did not disagree with him. He didn't seem to see anything to disagree over. Putin's phraseology was much more delicate, however. “He spoke of the pent-up potential for violence in the world and just one gain could “tip the scale now.” (Apparently, the Eastern and Western worlds are balanced on that scale and the grain could be Russia.)
The leader of the Jamahiriya was pleased to give a long answer to that statement as well, but the Russian delegation didn't get to find out what he said, since his translator gave a speech that all signs showed to be a completely independent speech. It had probably been pent up too.
Early the next morning, instead of negotiations, Gaddafi invited Putin to breakfast at his home. In the Russian delegation, that news was taken very close to the heart and they tried to convey the warmth of the invitation. Was my heart warmed, when I heard that Gaddafi had only breakfasted with members of his family before and that means he considers Putin a family member now? Yes, of course. And shivers ran down my spine too.
They spent more than two hours at breakfast. All the rest of social and political life in Libya was concentrated on an enormous green esplanade on the grounds of Gaddafi's residence, which looked extremely inviting to the Russian delegation, which had seen nothing like through the long Russian winter. It was covered with grass, even, square patches of which had recently been set in. The previous evening, it had been squashed by the limousine that brought Gaddafi and Putin to a Bedouin tent for negotiations. (Gaddafi's limousine had no license plates, just as Gaddafi, as is well known, has no passport.) The grass was not crushed, however, and the earth was not rutted. The ventilation shafts on the green, which covered several hectares, gave away its function. The leader of the Libyan Revolution lives and works underneath it, since the sky does not provide the same guarantees of life that several layers of concrete does.
The Russian officials were abuzz from the news of the resignation of Semen Vainshtok from Olimpstroi, which just been on all the Russian national television stations. I would not have been surprised if it had been on the Arab news as well. In a way, it was. Those who were there the evening before said that Rasha al-Arabiya, the Russian state-run Arabic-language channel, had been on.
The resignation had been unexpected and it was the main topic of conversation among the officials. Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller found out about it from me and was nonplussed. There was no obvious reason for him to resign or for his resignation to be accepted.
“You also have many facilities,” I noted, “both built and unbuilt.”
“Well, that doesn't affect us much,” Miller replied. “How can I explain it? We have our own…”
Finance Minister Alexey Kudrin stood by the Bedouin tent. You could say that he had done what he had come for, but that would be something of an exaggeration.
“They broke us,” one passing Russian negotiator said to another with genuine annoyance. And he was right.
Kudrin had insisted that Russia write off Libya's debt if it bought Russian military equipment worth the same amount.
However, Kommersant learned, the Libyans argued in the negotiations that, if they did that, they would hate Russia for using them so cynically and That's not what Russia needs Libya for.
Libya proposed a different option to the Russian negotiators. Gaddafi convinced them and Putin that it would be better to sell him heavy industrial equipment, which would, in fact, make Libya much more dependent on Russia. He mainly had in mind a contract with Russian Railways for the construction of a Sirte-Bengazi line. Standing on the green esplanade yesterday, Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin estimated that contract at ˆ2.2 billion. (It is already beneath the dignity of Russian officials to estimate such contracts in dollars, it seems.) That is what Putin and Gaddafi agreed to in negotiations as well.
Kudrin was able to preserve the total sum untouched at $4.5 billion (not euros).
“The agreement is based on the preparations of Sergey Storchak,” Kudrin said. It is clearly important to him to emphasize wherever possible that the ideas of his jailed deputy still live and prosper. Obviously, it is even more important to Storchak.
Kudrin did admit last night that they knocked $100 million off the debt. “We recognized a Vneshekonombank counterbond,” he explained. “The deadline is 2020, but we expect to take care of that amount in four or five years. And $700 million will be disbursed by May or June.”
Libya will pick out Russian tanks and landmines with the rest of the debt.
I asked Kudrin if he was satisfied with the outcome. He couldn't say no, of course. But he did tell a story from his childhood. He went to visit his grandfather in Omsk for summer vacation and there was no fruit in the stores except for a huge amount of figs. Every time he visited his grandfather, there were always lots of figs.
The finance minister admitted that he had never thought about why, in a country where there were no apples or tomatoes in the stores, there were so many figs.
Then he was quiet. That was the end of the story. The rest you had to figure out on your own, just as Kudrin had at some point.
Suddenly I got it. They were Libyan figs, with which Gaddafi had paid for Soviet arms shipments.
Kudrin appreciated my understanding.
“Yes, one authoritarian regime paid the other. That's what it was like then,” he said.
“And how it remains,” I added.
He looked at me, obviously unable to agree or disagree.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stepped out of the Bedouin tent and looked back and forth tensely. But for naught. There were no toilets for several hundred meters.
“Is it really so?” he asked. “No conveniences?”
“Underground,” I said, nodding at a ventilator.
Just then, the car that had been carrying the two leader of eternal revolutions around pulled up. Gaddafi got out of the armored car and I thought that he acted like a provincial actor playing the role of Legendary Leader of the Arab Jamahiriya. there was something about him that turned him into a caricature. Maybe it was the black sunglasses with silver around the ears, as is fashionable this season, or the shiny black shoes with thick soles, as if he wanted to seem taller that he really is. Or maybe it was his thick, tar-black curly hair poking out of his brown tassel-less fez. It was an unsuccessful copy of the portraits on the streets.
Even Putin seemed to want to copy the model a little and pulled dark glasses out of his pocket. But he caught himself in time and didn't put them on, probably imagining how they would both look in them. So he carried them.
They sat for a while in the tent for appearance's sake under a blasting air conditioner and fanned themselves nonetheless. Then Putin left Gaddafi's residence His farewell to Gaddafi was rather dry. No hugs. Gaddafi showed none of the famous Libyan hospitality on his departure either.
After Putin had shut the door of the limousine, Gaddafi took several jerky steps in that direction so that Putin could see him as he left.
Gaddafi did not leave immediately. He signed a copy of The Green Book, the catechism of the Arab revolution, for the producer of the Vesti news broadcast. “With regards, M. Gaddafi,” he wrote. Then he raised his hand as if in farewell, but continued to wander around the esplanade.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 18, 2008
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