Russia 100527 Basic Political Developments

Russia Today: Russia sends in experts to help Koreas

http://rt.com/Top_News/2010-05-27/russia-help-experts-koreas.html/print
27 May, 2010, 07:40

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has urged restraint and called on South and North Korea to find a peaceful way out of their deepening crisis.

He also has sent a group of experts to investigate the torpedo attack which has brought about the current crisis.

Tensions have escalated after an international investigation concluded that a North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors, an accusation furiously denied by Pyonyang.

Bad blood between North and South Korea is nothing new, but relations between the two have hit their lowest in years, causing international alarm about what might unfold.

Seoul cut trade links and wants UN sanctions. Pyongyang has severed all ties with the South in response, and says it’ll retaliate against any action.

The two countries went to war almost 60 years ago. The savagery is remembered by veterans like Yuri Baushev, who says such history must not be repeated.

“I saw people half alive, their clothes burnt throughout from the napalm. Terrible scene, terrible. You see the horrors that people experience,” he said.

A war today, Baushev adds, would create a tragedy the world can't even begin to imagine.

“This would not be a war between South and North Korea, but other countries interested in this war,” he said. “I think both China and Korea are not interested in this, but rather countries who are breathing down their necks. What countries? I don't want to say. Let politicians talk about that."

Yan Kanov, another veteran who fought in Korea, says conflict would be a catastrophe of global proportions.

“Allowing this conflict to expand shouldn't be done,” Kanov told RT. “Both sides should sit at the negotiating table, both South and North Korea. Another bloodshed can't be allowed to happen. If that time around 20 countries participated in the war, this time the conflict would drag in the majority of nations.”

Reclusive North Korea, cutv off from most of the world, accuses its neighbor of being a "puppet" of Washington, which is advocating a response from the international community to the sinking.

Calm is what's needed, says senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and former US assistant secretary of defense Lawrence Korb.

But the head of the Center for Research on Globalization, an independent Canadian think tank, claims that the danger posed by North Korea is being hyped up.

World leaders, however, are not so relaxed over the threat Pyongyang poses. North Korea has carried out nuclear bomb tests and fired long-range missiles, increasing international fears over the past year.

RIA: Russia, China concerned by growing Afghan drug threat

http://en.rian.ru/world/20100527/159177433.html
10:3127/05/2010

Russia's drug control chief, who is currently on a visit to Beijing, said on Thursday his Chinese colleagues shared Russia's concerns about the growing drug threat from Afghanistan.

Moscow has criticized U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan for failing to eradicate opium production and warned over the weekend that drug trafficking was endangering Russia's national security.

Viktor Ivanov said high-ranking Chinese officials, including Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu and Deputy Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping, had also expressed "particular concern" about Afghan drug trafficking, which they say "escalates tensions" in China's troubled Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous district.

"Both the Russian and the Chinese side note the extremely low efficiency of anti-drug efforts by the international coalition forces in Afghanistan," he said.

A year ago, Russia provided the coalition forces with information on 175 drug labs in Afghanistan, but "they continue to send heroin to our countries, and none of them has been eliminated," Ivanov said.

Russia says production of heroin in Afghanistan has increased almost tenfold since the US-led invasion to oust the Taliban in 2001.

The Chinese public security minister said the amount of Afghan drugs is also on the increase in China. It rose from 4.3 metric tons of heroin last year to six metric tons in the first five months of 2010.

BEIJING, May 27 (RIA Novosti) 

VOR:Russia praises anti-drug cooperation with China

http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/05/27/8548997.html

May 27, 2010 10:16 Moscow Time

Chief of the Russian anti-drug agency Viktor Ivanov has hailed partnership with China in combating drug smuggling. Addressing reporters in Beijing, he said both sides regularly exchanged drug trafficking data and conducted joint operations. Mr. Ivanov expressed deep concern over the situation in Afghanistan which remains the source of 95% of all heroin sold in the world.

YLE: Putin Visits Lappeenranta on Thursday

http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/news/2010/05/putin_visits_lappeenranta_on_thursday_1715156.html
published today 09:03 AM, updated today 09:29 AM

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin makes a one-day visit to Finland on Thursday. He will meet his Finnish counterpart Matti Vanhanen in the eastern city of Lappeenranta.

Putin is to arrive around midday. The premiers will sign a 50-year bilateral deal on leasing the Saimaa Canal to Finland.

The 43-kilometre waterway connects Lappeenranta and the formerly Finnish city of Vyborg. It is used for freight transport and tourist cruises. The pact replaces an earlier one signed with the Soviet Union in 1963.

(Click here to see a video clip of the original signing ceremony from the YLE Archive.)

High-Speed Rail Link to Open

Local officials say the best chance to catch a glimpse of the two premiers will be around 1 pm, when they are to appear at Lappeenranta railway station. They are to officially launch the new Allegro high-speed rail link between St Petersburg and Helsinki.

State Railways VR says the train will initially cut the travel time between the two cities to three and a half hours, and later to three hours. Now the trip takes five and a half hours.

YLE
Itar-Tass: Putin to visit Finland, attend EU-Russia innovation forum

http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=15166870&PageNum=0

27.05.2010, 03.59

LAPPEENRANTA /Finland/, May 27 (Itar-Tass) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will visit Finland on Thursday where he will attend the final session of the 1st EU-Russia Innovation Forum and sign the treaty prolonging Finland's lease of the Russian part of the Saimaa Canal and adjacent territory.

The premier will also attend the presentation of the Allegro high-speed train that will start shuttling between St.Petersburg and Helsinink by the end of this year.

During the visit, Putin will hold talks with his Finnish colleague Matti Vanhanen. The parties will discuss a broad range of all issues of Russian-Finish trade and economic relations, cooperation in transport, energy, technological innovations, the timber and agro-industrial sectors, joint development of border and custom infrastructure and problems of regional cooperation in northern Europe. The two prime ministers will meet in the town of Lappeenranta, the press service of the Russian government said.

Putin and Vanhanen are expected to sign a treaty leasing the Russian part of the Saimaa Canal and adjacent territory to Finland. The document replaces the 1962 lease agreement and will give a new impulse to the transport cooperation between the two countries.

Saimaa Canal's total length is 57.3 kilometers with seaway, including a 23.3-kilometer stretch in Finland, 19.6 kilometers on the Russian territory leased by Finland and 14.4 kilometers on the Russian territory. The Canal is open for inland, lake and sea-going vessels. The maximum throughput capacity is 11,5000 vessels in both directions, with cargo turnover at 4.6 million tons during the navigation period.

Timber and sawn timber, paper and pulp, raw materials and passenger traffic account for a significant share of transportation via the Saimaa Canal. The transportation by Finnish and Russian vessels by volume is roughly the same.

Putin will attend the presentation of the Allegro fast train which will begin regular runs en route St Petersburg - Helsinki in December 2010.

The rail link project is implemented by the Oy Karelian Trains Russian-Finnish joint venture, set by Russian Railways and VR Group.

The Allegro train is expected to cover the distance between St.Petersburg and Helsinki in three and a half hours. The current travel time by rail is five and half hours.

Russian Railways plans to replace the Sibelius and Repin trains with new equipment by 2011, which will run three times a day.

Allegro trains are designed for operation on alternating and direct current tracks. The maximum speed is 220 kilometers per hour. The trains will be equipped with the intercom system intended for operation both in Finland and Russia. Each train comprises seven cars with 344 passengers who can travel 1st and 2nd class.

The cars of both classes are equipped with adjustable seats, folding tables, pouches for keeping newspapers and magazines, footrests, and sockets for connecting computers or charging mobile phones.

The train has seats for disabled persons, a children's playground, and seats for passengers with pets. Each train has a restaurant car. The contract to supply four Allegro train built on the Pendolino standard platform was signed in September 2007. The contract is worth 120 million euros.

Putin and Vanhanen will participate in the final session of the first EU-Russia Innovation forum. It is held within the framework of the international project European-Russian innovation corridor (ERICO), whose objective is to develop EU-Russia cooperation in the field of innovations on the basis of the experience in cooperation between St.Petersburg and southeastern Finland.

Finland is an important trade partner of Russia. Two-way trade made up 13 billion dollars last year (22.4 billion dollars in 2008), according to the Russian Customs Service. Exports in the designated period reached 9.1 billion dollars and imports - 3.9 billion dollars. Trade surplus made up 5.2 billion dollars.

Russia continues to rank Finland's number one trade partner, accounting for a 12.5-percent share. Trade turnover between Russia and Finland in the first quarter of 2010 made up 3.9 billion dollars, up 29.8 percent from the same period in 2009. The increase occurred largely due to a 39.5 percent growth in Russian exports, which were worth 3.13 billion U.S. dollars versus 2.24 billion U.S. dollars in January-March 2009.

Russian-Finnish investment cooperation has been developing dynamically. The aggregate sum of accumulated direct Finnish investments in Russia reached over 5 billion euros in 2009. Investments are amassed in the Northwestern (73.8 percent) and Central Federal District (22.9 percent). There are more than 2,000 firms with Russian stakes in Finland.