Putin Frowns on U.S. Missiles in Europe

washington post

MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin on Thursday scoffed at Washington's claims that possible deployment of U.S. missile defense sites in central Europe was intended to counter threats posed by Iran and said that Russia would take countermeasures.

U.S. officials have said that proposed missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic will be designed to intercept missiles planned by Iran that would be capable of reaching eastern Europe and will not affect Russia's security. But Putin said the Kremlin didn't trust that claim.

President Vladimir Putin seen before his meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov in the Kremlin in Moscow, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007. Putin on Wednesday warned of a threat of extremism and ethnic and religious intolerance in the months before parliamentary elections and ordered law enforcement agencies to do more to protect the nation's secrets.

President Vladimir Putin seen before his meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov in the Kremlin in Moscow, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007. Putin on Wednesday warned of a threat of extremism and ethnic and religious intolerance in the months before parliamentary elections and ordered law enforcement agencies to do more to protect the nation's secrets.

"Our military experts don't believe that the missile defense systems to be deployed in eastern Europe are intended to counter the threat from Iran or some terrorists," Putin said at his annual news conference, adding that Iran only has missiles which aren't capable of reaching Europe.

"We consider such claims unfounded, and, naturally, that directly concerns us and will cause a relevant reaction. That reaction will be asymmetrical, but it will be highly efficient," Putin said.

Putin said that Russia's latest Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles were capable of penetrating missile defenses and added that more effective weapons systems are being developed.

"We will have next-generation systems immune to any prospective missile defense," Putin said. He said that while missile defense systems under development will only be capable of tackling ballistic missiles, the new weapons will be capable of changing the altitude and direction of their flight on their way to target.

"Missile defense systems are helpless against that," Putin said.

He rejected allegations that the planned deployment of U.S. missile defense sites in Europe could be a response to Russia's growing defense spending, saying the U.S. move had been planned long before growing oil revenues gave Russia a chance to increase its defense spending. He said Moscow's military budget is still 25 times smaller than Washington's defense spending.

Thousands in Mexico City Protest Rising Food Prices

new york times

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 31 — Tens of thousands of workers and farmers filled this city’s central square on Wednesday to protest spiraling food prices, ratcheting up the volume over a problem that has dogged President Felipe Calderón in his first weeks in office.

Left-wing parties joined the unions and peasant organizations that had called the protest. The protesters, some of whom handed out ears of corn, marched up Mexico City’s main avenue to the Zócalo, the site of protests through much of the summer and fall against Mr. Calderón’s election.

The high cost of tortillas and other food staples has consumed politics here over the past few weeks, posing a stubborn challenge to Mr. Calderón as he seeks to project an image as a take-charge leader. It has spilled into the ever-simmering debate here over the country’s commitment to free-market economics.

As marchers gathered at dusk in the city’s main square, a former television personality, Verónica Velasco, read a statement condemning the government’s policies. “While other countries are looking for alternatives to neoliberal policies, in Mexico, the government has lagged behind and insisted in applying a model that, after a quarter century, has shown its inefficiency and inequality,” the statement said.

As night fell, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftist candidate who narrowly lost to Mr. Calderón in July, spoke to the crowd.

City officials would not give an estimate of the size of the protest.

To opponents of Mr. Calderón’s government, the spike in the price of tortillas is further proof that the free-market policies he has pledged to continue benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor. The high prices are new ammunition for those who have previously pressed to renegotiate the agricultural chapter of the North American Free Trade Agreement to provide more protection for Mexican farmers, and for Mexico to end its dependence on imports of American corn and recover what nationalists call food sovereignty.

Mr. Calderón barely won a bitterly contested election in July against a leftist opponent who promised to roll back some of those policies. Aware that he would have to win over part of the population that has yet to see the benefits of free trade, Mr. Calderón quickly announced a series of social programs once he took office.

He also cracked down on the drug trade, establishing an image as a decisive executive. He ordered the army into several cities to fight drug violence and summarily extradited 11 drug trafficking suspects to the United States.

But the tortilla price spiral appeared to come as a surprise. Although Mr. Calderón moved quickly, announcing a pact on Jan. 18 to freeze prices, the problem has not been resolved.

Even with the pact, the news reports focused on the fact that the price ceiling for the tortillas of about 35 cents a pound was about 40 percent higher than the price three months earlier and contrasted that with the 4 percent increase in the minimum wage, which is still less than $5 a day.

But because fewer than 10 percent of tortilla producers signed on to the agreement, the government had little power over those who did not. In some areas, prices have risen to 45 cents a pound. There is little more that Mr. Calderón can do to contain prices without huge expenditures for subsidies. Most analysts agree that the main cause of the increase has been a spike in corn prices in the United States, as the demand for corn to produce ethanol has jumped.

But the uneven structure of Mexico’s corn and tortilla industry here has also generated accusations — none of them proved — of hoarding and profiteering. Mexico’s corn flour industry is controlled by just two companies, Grupo Maseca, also known as Gruma, and Minsa. Under the pact, Gruma agreed to keep prices for corn flour at 21 cents a pound. The government has promised to crack down on profiteers.

Ken Shwedel, an agricultural economist in Mexico City for the Dutch agribusiness bank Rabobank, said prices were likely to remain high in the United States, which supplies about 25 percent of Mexico’s corn.

“This is the first time you’ve got a real agricultural shock to the economy,” he said. “The market economy isn’t as benevolent as a state-run economy. The market is characterized by fluctuations. You have to live with it and know how to deal with it.”

The marchers clearly directed their blame at the government. “When they get involved in something as elemental as tortillas, well that’s just irresponsible,” said Francisco Ruiz, 48, a telephone worker.

Carola Ortega, 64, a member of a peasant group, said: “We’re here because the government always takes advantage of the poor. First it was tortillas, but we’re not stupid; if tortillas go up, everything else does too.”

Some analysts argue that the opposition has merely seized on a convenient issue and that the controversy will blow over.

“For the unions, it is about much more than tortillas,” said Vidal Romero, a political scientist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, a Mexico City university. “They want to make it clear to the president that they still have strength and not let the government do what it wants.”

For the left, the tortilla issue is a new rallying cry after months of postelectoral protests. Mr. Romero said the left hoped to use the march to position itself as the main opposition force to Mr. Calderón’s presidency. “They want to draw oxygen from it,” he said.

Putin hopes Russia-Iran contact will reassure West

reuters

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin said today he hoped a visit by Russia’s Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov to Tehran this month would help Iran reassure the West that it does not seek nuclear weapons.

“We hope that (Ivanov’s) visit to Iran will help us align our positions and will help convince our Iranian partners to take decisions that would improve the situation in a healthy way...and remove all suspicions in the international community about Iran’s alleged plans to create nuclear weapons,” Putin said during an annual news conference.

Western powers fear Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme will be used for atomic bombs and the UN Security Council passed a resolution in December imposing limited sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend the programme.

Iran says it has a right to develop its civilian nuclear sector and last month said it was pressing ahead with a plan to install 3 000 atomic centrifuges. Russia is building Iran’s first nuclear power plant in Bushehr.

Last month, Russia angered the US by delivering new anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran and said it would consider more requests from Tehran for defensive weapons.

Murdered spy had no reason to run, Putin says

guardian

The murdered former spy Alexander Litvinenko did not possess any secrets and had no reason to flee Russia, the country's president, Vladimir Putin, said today.

Facing more than 1,200 journalists at an annual televised press conference in the Kremlin's Round Hall, Mr Putin fielded questions on the deaths of the former KGB officer and the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

During the three and a half hour conference, he expressed mistrust over US proposals to site anti-missile systems in eastern Europe, rejecting the idea that these would only target possible missiles from Iran.

He also insisted Russia was not using its huge energy resources as a political weapon and rejected suggestions that he might try to orchestrate a succession as his second - and constitutionally final - term in office draws to a close.

Mr Litvinenko, in a statement made shortly before his death, accused Mr Putin of being involved in a plot to poison him. However, the Russian president said there had been no reason for Mr Litvinenko to flee to Britain, where he settled in 2000.

The former spy had complained of official harassment in Russia after making allegations about misconduct by the Russian security services.

"There was no need to flee anywhere. He did not carry any secrets at all," Mr Putin was quoted as saying by Reuters. "Whatever negative comments he had about his old job, he had already said everything. There could be nothing new in his words."

Mr Putin rejected suggestions Mr Litvinenko had been killed as part of a plot to discredit the Kremlin.

"Openly speaking, I don't believe in the conspiracy thesis," he said, also refusing to speculate on how Mr Litvinenko had ingested the radioactive poison that killed him.

The Russian president threatened unspecified but retaliatory measures against any US positioning of anti-missile defences in eastern Europe.

Washington has proposed putting a radar station in the Czech Republic and a battery of rockets in Poland. The Pentagon says the equipment is intended to detect and shoot down hostile missiles, which it says could come from Iran.

However, Mr Putin said: "Our specialists don't think that anti-missile systems in eastern Europe are aimed against terrorists or Iran. Can you really fight terrorists with ballistic missiles?"

When questioned about energy, he said Russia was simply trying to ensure it received a fair price for its oil and gas.

Last month, shipments of Russian oil to western Europe were interrupted for several days in a dispute over prices with Belarus, through which a Russian pipeline passes.

Gas supplies were also reduced in early 2006 when Moscow was locked in a similar disagreement with Ukraine.

However, Mr Putin denied any political motives. "We are always told that Russia is using its ... economic resources to achieve its foreign policy aims," he said. "This is not the case."

He said Moscow wanted to charge market prices after years of providing energy to ex-Soviet neighbours at subsidised tariffs.

"Russia has always met, and will continue to meet, its obligations to supply its customers, but we are not obliged to subsidise other countries' economies on an enormous scale," he added.

Mr Putin stressed that he would not nominate a designated successor ahead of the presidential elections scheduled to take place in March 2008.

"There will be no successor. There will be candidates for the post of president," he said. "The authorities' goal is to ensure the elections are held democratically."