April 27, 2007	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 09, 1428

BRUSSELS: European Union leaders reacted to the news of Boris Yeltsin’s death by heaping lavish praise on the Russian president for his decisive role in copper-fastening a rapprochement with the West during the 1990s.

Under Yeltsin, Russia entered into an agreement with the EU that made it one of the bloc’s official partners and committed both sides to cooperation on a wide range of political and economic matters.

But the tributes to Yeltsin offered only a fleeting distraction from how relations between the Union and its largest neighbour have been marked by considerable disharmony for several years.

Indeed, when some leading politicians from Germany, the current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, learned of Yeltsin’s death on Apr 23, they were about to begin talks with Sergei Lavrov, foreign minister in the Moscow government, on the latest irritant in EU-Russia ties: Russia’s ban on meat and vegetables from Poland. Ostensibly, that measure was taken on food safety grounds but Poland, an EU member, suspects it was politically motivated.

Just a few days earlier, Europe’s trade commissioner Peter Mandelson said that EU-Russia relations are at their worst since the end of the Cold War. Speaking in the Italian city Bologna, Mandelson said that many in the EU had believed Russia would move speedily to a western-style democracy and market economy following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Yet Russians are widely sceptical about the value of the transformation their country has witnessed, he said.

That is because the “shock therapy” tactics employed by Yeltsin aimed at liberalising the economy and privatising resources had concentrated wealth in the hands of a few ‘oligarchs’, without benefits for the general population, he said.

The dearth of trust in EU-Russia relations is especially striking in energy issues.

About one-fifth of the total energy consumed in the EU originates in Russia, the biggest supplier of oil and gas to the Union. Whereas Russia had been regarded as a dependable source of energy, this perception has changed over the past year. Russia briefly cut off gas supplies to Ukraine at the beginning of 2006, and has also temporarily disrupted the flow of energy to other former Soviet states.

There is also much difference of opinion on human rights and the autocratic tendencies of President Vladimir Putin.

This week, the European Parliament approved its annual report on human rights in the world.

The report contains a litany of complaints against the Russian authorities. These include the murder of journalist Anna Politkowskaja, who investigated atrocities committed by Russian troops in Chechnya, allegations that the Russian government was behind the poisoning of the former spy Alexander Litvienko in London, and the reported ill-treatment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former chief of the oil giant Yukos, who has been in detention since 2003.

Simon Coveney, an Irish member of the European Parliament (MEP), who authored the report, also expressed regret that the EU had “only a limited success in bringing about policy change” in Russia by raising such issues as the war in Chechnya, curbs on freedom of expression, and political interference in the judiciary with the Moscow authorities.

Top EU figures will have an opportunity to once again make plain their concerns to Putin when an EU-Russia summit takes place in Samara, south-eastern Russia, on May 18.

Katinka Barysch, a policy analyst with the Centre for European Reform in London, said that protests by the EU over recent police violence against political demonstrations in Moscow have had no impact.

“The German presidency did issue a frank statement saying ‘this is not on, you can’t beat up demonstrators’,” she told in an interview. “But the Russians just go back to business as usual.

“I don’t think that the EU side believes that it is making a difference in terms of human rights in Russia. To a large degree, the statements it makes are for home consumption.”

On six consecutive occasions since last year, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, has ruled against Russia over the conduct of its war in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Most recently, it found that the ‘disappearance’ of Chechen leader Shakhid Baysayev amounted to a violation of the rights to life, liberty and security and that his case had not been properly investigated.

While it was Yeltsin who ordered troops to bombard Chechnya, Putin has been successful in fending off international criticisms of tactics there by linking his campaign against Islamic insurgents with the US-led war against terrorism.

“Putin has been able to get a free hand with regard to Chechnya,” Barysch said. “He has argued that it’s essential for Russia to keep the Russian federation together and he has been able to cite evidence that the extremists and terrorists he regards as his enemies in Chechnya get support from extremist groups around the world.”

The ten-year political cooperation agreement that Yeltsin signed with the EU will expire at the end of 2007. It will then be automatically renewed, unless either side asks otherwise.

Last year, the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, signalled it wants the agreement to be updated and to become more ambitious, particularly in boosting trade. A revamped agreement would be based on “common values such as democracy, human rights and the rule of law,” the Commission said.

Some MEPs this week said that a new accord should have more stringent provisions on human rights, to allow the Union a greater say on surrounding issues.

Delphine Reculeau from the World Organisation against Torture urged the EU to pay particular heed to the harassment of human rights activists in Russia. It is logical that the EU should be more active on this question, she said, as it devised guidelines in 2004 on raising the plight of human rights activists during its diplomatic dealings with other countries.

She welcomed how the EU institutions have protested over the murder of journalist Anna Politkowskaja, but noted that most violations of human rights do not receive the same attention.

“The case of Anna Politkowskaja is emblematic and it is very important,” she told reporters. “But it is one of many. At a declaratory level, we’ve seen progress in the EU’s policy on human rights defenders. But unfortunately, there’s still a lot of work to do.”—Dawn/The IPS News Service