India and Russia are not satisfied with the mutual trade turnover (last year it amounted 10 billion dollars) and intend to contribute actively to its significant growth. These tasks were discussed at the meeting in Moscow of the co-chairs of the Russian-Indian Intergovernmental Commission on Cooperation.
On the part of India the Commission is headed by Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid, on the part of Rusia – by Vice Premier Dmitry Rogozin. In the course of the meeting of Dmitry Rogozin has outlined his vision of the present day and prospects of trade and economic interaction between the two countries.
"We must strive to attain a much more substantial level of trade considering the traditionally friendly, very close relations between Russia and India, Dmitry Rogozin noted. This can be achieved by not only joint industrial cooperation, but also joint industrial initiatives. And it should be done not only in the sphere of defense, but also in civilian areas."
With this purpose, the Russian-Indian Intergovernmental Commission will select to implement the most promising projects. Among the submitted projects there is a project that aims to increase the production of Russian KAMAZ trucks in India; establish a joint centre of the Helicopters of Russia JSC and the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited Company aimed at producing next-generation helicopters; develop new oil and gas fields in Russia by the Indian ONGC Company. The co-chairs of the Russian-Indian Intergovernmental Commission expect to receive proposals of the most significant projects as early as May.
Indian experts believe that the path to increasing trade and economic cooperation with Russia lays with the removal of trade barriers, namely, the abolition of customs tariffs. But it is impossible to do this on the bilateral basis. Russia is a member of the Customs Union of the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC). The Community also includes Kazakhstan and Belarus. However, India has fairly wide economic relations with these now independent states, which were Soviet republics in the past, and it is interested in the further development of relations with them, notes member of the leadership of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) Artem Anikyev. It was India, he continues, that initiated the question regarding the possibility of a free trade agreement with the EurAsEC, or an agreement on comprehensive economic cooperation with this community. This topic was raised again at the negotiations in Moscow of India’s Minister of Industry Anand Sharma and his Russian colleagues in mid-April. It was also voiced by the Indian side at the current meeting of co-chairmen of the Intergovernmental Commission.
"The agreement on creating a zone of free trade, when the countries annul customs tariffs, is in fact the first stage of integration, Artem Anikyev notes. While offering to discuss a possible agreement, India expects to purchase Russian aviation and machine-building equipment, energy equipment, fertilizers, Belarusian tractors, and industrial products of Kazakhstanat lower prices. It will be profitable for Russia to import from India products of light industry, agricultural products, pharmaceutical products and new information technologies. This can be mutually beneficial, but such a step implies huge risks. To protect oneself from them, Russia and its partners in the EurAsEC, as well as India, should agree on a list of goods with zero customs tariff. The stand on this step will be taken collectively by all the participants of the union. Today, a comprehensive action plan regarding this issue is under way."
The Russian Federation and India intend to thoroughly calculate the possible consequences of such an undertaking and look forward to its positive results. Members of the Indian delegation participating in the meeting of co-chairmen of the Russian-Indian Intergovernmental Commission have expressed their wish to discuss the possibility of the agreement on a free trade zone with the Russian Federation and other EurAsEC countries at the forthcoming International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, which will be held in the Northern capital of Russia in June.
Gordievsky, 74, claims a large number of Vladimir Putin's agents are based at the Russian embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens. As well as career officers, the embassy runs a network of "informers", who are not officially employed, Gordievsky said, but regularly pass on useful information. They include a famous oligarch.
"There are 37 KGB men in London at the moment. Another 14 work for GRU [Russian military intelligence]," Gordievsky told the Guardian. How did he know? "From my contacts," he said enigmatically, hinting at sources inside British intelligence.
Fogle purportedly offered the Russian officer up to $1 million a year for his cooperation, according to a letter he was carrying that was released by the FSB.
“We are ready to offer you $100,000 and discuss your experience, expertise and cooperation. Payment can be significantly higher if you are prepared to answer specific questions,” the letter says. “Furthermore, we are offering up to $1 million a year for long-term cooperation with additional bonuses for information that can help us.
Just stating the obvious.Austin wrote:Video of the event
http://youtu.be/Je5cjpDwAbU
What is the use of RFID Shield in that picture ?
David Randall looks for the truth
In the long and sinuous history of international espionage, the one thing you can absolutely rely on is that very little is as it first appears. And so it is with Ryan Christopher Fogle, third secretary in the political department of the US Embassy in Moscow, comedy wig owner, and, apparently, a man who thinks it wise to hang around near park entrances at midnight with €100,000 (£85,000) in cash about his person.
Caught in the act of trying to subvert a Russian intelligence agent, he is then marched off to the sort of bare office where once the KGB went about their business, and is filmed looking forlorn as a Russian official berates him for his stupidity. Beside him is laid out the almost childish equipment he took with him on his mission. Later, a letter from him offering his target $100,000 now and $1m a year thereafter is released to the Moscow media. The Russians have a field day, the US State Department stays resolutely shtum. Not a word of protest, denial or explanation. Fogle, it appears, is the world's dumbest spy and the Russians have got him bang to rights.
But kick the tyres, poke the evidence a bit, and not everything is quite as straightforward as that. This weekend, further reasons to count your change on this story were emerging. It now seems Fogle might not be quite as big a noodle as he first appeared, and the Russians not quite as smart. The following, as far as we can ascertain, is the most likely interpretation of what was going on.
Fogle came to work at the embassy in Moscow in April 2011. He was young, about 26, no doubt eager, and, from the Russian point of view, had a bit of form. Raised in Missouri, a graduate of Colgate University in New York State, and a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, he was, according to its winter 2010 newsletter, then living in Virginia, which also accommodates the headquarters of the CIA, at Langley, Fairfax County. Now Virginia's a big place, and not every resident works for the CIA, but Fogle's late 2011 email address has been identified as that of a subscriber to briefings from the intelligence firm Stratfor. It's the kind of thing that gets you on the radar of a country's intelligence services when you're posted there.
And that, according to the Russians (and their claim fits the facts), is exactly what happened. The former frat boy from Colgate was clocked the moment he arrived in Moscow, and, the Russians confidently claim, was monitored as he went about his probably low-level extra-curricular duties. And so, his life of semi-subter- fuge went on until this year, when two things happened.
One was the Boston bombing by the Tsarnaev brothers, native Chechens, and one a recent long-term visitor to Dagestan, something of a haven for Islamist terrorists. Washington and Moscow made cooing noises about intelligence-sharing on the subject, but, in all likelihood, beneath the surface there was intense competition for any scrap of information about extremism in the Caucasus. And Russian sensitivities were made all the more tender by the unpublicised expulsion in January of a what the Russians described as a "CIA operative".
It was in this context that, last week, Fogle's career took a most public turn. The means to contact a Russian intelligence agent who specialises in the Caucasus had, says the FSB, Russia's domestic security agency, come his way (or been dangled before him), and he rose to the bait, like a not very bright trout gulping for flies on a balmy May evening.
The following is the Russian account of what happened next (the Americans have not challenged or commented on this version in any way): Fogle was driven by a colleague to a point where the pair were convinced any surveillance had been shaken off. As midnight approached, he made his way to what seems to have been a pre-arranged meet at Vorontsovsky Park, calling his target twice on the way. A convenient recording has him saying, in accented Russian: "Hello. I am a representative of a Western country …. e have been watching you for a long time and we think that your work is very impressive. I, today, have for you $100,000 …. Are you interested?" Then, as he walked on the nearby Ulitsa Akademika Pilyugina sporting his blond wig, he was nabbed, and taken into custody.
This all makes some sort of sense, or is at least plausible. Fogle seems almost certainly to be CIA (indeed, the US State Department referred some press inquiries to CIA HQ). And, unless he had been abducted, drugged, had a wig plopped on his head, and been taken to near the park for an arrest to be staged, it looks as if he might actually have been trying to recruit a Russian agent.
But it is hard to resist the idea that the Russians, keen to make mischief and play to the domestic television audience, then rather over-egged the evidential pudding. As the hapless Fogle sat in the FSB office waiting for three colleagues to come and collect him, the supposed contents of his kit bag were displayed. On a table were: a compass; a pepper gas canister; an extra wig (brunette); an ancient Nokia mobile phone; a city map book (for a man who'd lived in Moscow for two years and was going to a large and easy-to-find landmark); a torch; sunglasses; and other paraphernalia. All that was missing, from this Junior Amateur Spy Outfit, was a secret code-book and bottle of invisible ink.
And then there was the letter Fogle was allegedly carrying to give to his "recruit". It outlined terms, instructions on how to use Google Mail, and read like one of those emails from an overseas attorney telling you Hiram J Finkelstein has died leaving you sole beneficiary of his $4.4m estate, and all you have to do is send personal details and a $10,000 administration fee, and the loot's all yours.
The letter went: "Dear Friend, This is an advance from someone who is very impressed by your professionalism … We are prepared to offer you $100,000 … and your payment might be far greater if you are prepared to answer some specific questions. Additionally, for long-term co-operation we offer up to $1,000,000 a year with the promise of additional bonuses … Thank you for reading this … Your friends."
The letter referred to dollars, as did the supposed phone call, and yet there on the table were euros, apparently 100,000 of them, which, by our reckoning, comes to about $129,000. Generosity indeed – or, perhaps, a case of the FSB man writing the letter not liaising with the one supplying the props. Either way, that and the million per, are way above the going rate for a little modest traitoring.
All this was not done for the FSB's private amusement. The night's events and the table of evidence were captured on film, which was about to get its premiere. On Tuesday at 2.30pm local time, at the very moment that the US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, was starting a public Twitter Q&A, the state-financed TV channel, RT, broadcast the story and its accompanying footage. It then went global, with many news outlets taking the more rococo details at face value.
Since then, the US has declined to offer comment or enlightenment – a comment in itself, really. They have even refused to say if Fogle has returned home. We tried to put a series of questions to them, but answers came there none. There's no great diplomatic fall-out, no charges, no trial, no lasting effects. Just a little intelligence game that got all dressed up in a wig one night, and then got rather out of hand.
Litvinenko: "Is it possible he was a perpetrator not a victim?"
Tags: UK, Alexander Litvinenko , Russian intelligence, Marina Litvinenko, British intelligence, Polonium, Interviews
Tim Ecott
May 20, 2013 16:07
Alexander Litvinenko with wife Marina
Rex Features
A coroner's inquest into the mysterious death of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 has been stalled by the coroner agreeing to exclude certain evidence on the basis of national security. VoR's Tim Ecott speaks to Professor Phillip Knightley, an author specialising in intelligence matters.
Professor Phillip Knightley: It’s fairly rare because usually the disclosure of such material, where the government minister has advised that such disclosure could cause real harm or threat to the national security, he is obliged, namely the coroner, not to hold the full coronial inquiry and [not to] allow the material to be placed in the public domain. So, once the risk of national security has been certified by appropriate ministerial certificate, the court has really no other role to play.
Tim Ecott: One would assume, therefore, that he would have to make an interim ruling or just a ruling saying ‘open verdict’ or ‘inconclusive’? Something along those lines, I don’t know what the official term would be.
Professor Phlilip Knightley: Yes, he would be able to examine in public the reason for his decision not to hold a proper inquiry and once he made that decision, taken that course, that would be the end of the matter.
Tim Ecott: In your experience, watching matters to do with espionage over your long career, are there any parallels with any other cases that have come to public attention like this?
Professor Phillip Knightley: Yes, there are. In the Blake case, the court withheld information that it thought might endanger national security and why the court has decided in this case that national security is endangered I don’t know, that’s kept secret.
Tim Ecott: The fact, though, that Mister Litvinenko died in hospital and a lot of questions had been raised about even the autopsy report and the death certificate, there seems to be a lot of obfuscation or lack of clarity about exactly what did happen to him even after he became ill.
Professor Phillip Knightley: Yes, this is a murky area. Nobody even knows what happened, what he was doing, what his motives were, who he was working for, why he was in London, what he was up to. I can understand Mrs Litvinenko’s anger that coronial inquiry will not go ahead at the moment because she thought that this might be finally and forever cleared up. Instead, it looks more obscure and murkier than before.
Litvinenko widow calls for public inquiry
Tim Ecott: It’s also unusual, isn’t it, in terms of British proceedings, for the Foreign Secretary to come out and make statements acknowledging that there are things he wishes to be kept secret, is it not?
Professor Phillip Knightley: Yes, I think he was supposed to do that because of the demand by Mrs Litvinenko and by the General Republic to know what really went wrong. Here is this man in London with polonium, carrying polonium, polluting public places wherever he went and nobody quite knows who he was working for, what he was up to and why he was carrying this material.
Tim Ecott: Do you think that this is potentially embarrassing for the government? Is that the most likely reason for them wanting to keep information secret or is it genuinely that there are things here which the public just should not know about? What do you make of that argument?
Professor Philip Knightley: Well, I believe that one must ask the question what is the government trying to hide. I think the one thing that they most desperately try to conceal is Mr Litvinenko’s relationship with British intelligence.
Tim Ecott: What leads you to that conclusion?
Professor Philip Knightley: Just his general behavior and the attitude of the British government to inquiries that the Russian government was making. The whole atmosphere and the indications of behavior of these people all leads me to believe that there is some sort of secret intelligence involvement.
Tim Ecott: Now, the Russian authorities have persistently claimed that they’ve not had a cooperation that they would have hoped from the British authorities and, I think, in the British media that’s almost being ‘poo-pooed’ but form what you are saying it sounds as if there may well be some truth in that suggestion.
Professor Philip Knightley: Yes, I think there’s still lots of unrevealed about who Mr Litvinenko was working for, what he was doing in London, why he was carrying polonium. Is it possible that he was a perpetrator rather than a victim, and there was some sort of government’s thing to reveal underground exchange of polonium and radioactive materials, a possibility of a black-market existing, and he got involved. It’s all, since then, become very murky and difficult to decide where the truth lies.
Tim Ecott: But given your experience of intelligence matters over the years, that sort of theory wouldn’t surprise you.
Professor Phillip Knightley: No, it wouldn’t have surprised me at the least.
Professor Knightley is also an advocate of open society and believes attempts to impose a blackout on the grounds of national security are counter productive.
The Litvinenko inquest, "beyond farce" - William Dunkerley
Last month the First All-Russian Congress of Ayurveda was held in Moscow with the support of Indian Embassy. The key topics of discussion were including Ayurveda in the medical syllabus at Russian universities and implementing Ayurvedic medicines in Russian healthcare.
...
The head of the Non-Drug Therapies and Clinical Physiology, Prof. Vadim Zilov conducted the opening ceremony of the two-day Congress on April 12-13, which was attended, among others, by Ms Madhumita Hazarika Bhagat, Director of the Jawaharlal Nehru Cultural Centre (JNCC), under Indian Embassy on behalf of the Indian ambassador Ajai Malhotra.
Many high-profile Russian participants were present at the Congress, among them, P.V. Glybochko, Rector of Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, Vladimir Egorov, Assistant Chairman, Committee on Health Protection, Sergei Dorofev, Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Health Protection, Prof. Alexander Razumov, Director, Doctor of Medicine, Academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.
Feuding tycoons and pious rustics: Alexander Lebedev’s 'comical' trial hits heights of absurdity
Shaun Walker
Moscow
Friday 31 May 2013
Alexander Lebedev appears in court over punching property tycoon Sergei Polonsky on Russian television show
The trial of Alexander Lebedev continued in a surreal vein today, as the court heard from a former billionaire who now lives in the forest as a pious peasant, and it was discussed whether hitting someone in the face is in line with Christian values.
The Russian businessman and financial backer of The Independent is on trial for “hooliganism motivated by political hatred” after punching Sergei Polonsky, a controversial property tycoon, during a televised talk show in 2011. He could face five years in jail if found guilty. The odd nature of the charges, which require prosecutors to prove that Mr Lebedev did indeed act out of “political hatred”, is matched by bizarre goings-on in the courtroom.
Already, the Moscow court has heard from witnesses who say they were approached in the street and asked to testify that they had watched the programme on television. Yesterday, it was the turn of the defence to call witnesses, including another participant in the televised programme. German Sterligov, formerly a successful businessman, withdrew to the Russian countryside nearly a decade ago. He lives in Tolstoyan solitude in a shack with no electricity.
He arrived at court wearing peasant clothes and mud-spattered shoes, and gave his occupation as a shepherd. He said Mr Polonsky had been acting so strangely during the recording of the television show that he had thought the tycoon might be “high on drugs”, and added that he himself had been close to hitting Mr Polonsky. When asked whether that would not have contradicted his religious convictions, he said: “God blesses religious warriors,” adding that it is fine to hit someone who offends you. Asked by the prosecutor whether he would have said the same if a woman had been involved, he looked surprised. “How could a woman offend a man? That’s impossible, by definition,” he said.
Almost all the witnesses in the case so far have said they did not see any political motivation in Mr Lebedev’s actions, and even most of the prosecution witnesses have largely backed Mr Lebedev’s version of events.
“Absolutely no ideological or political questions were discussed during the programme,” said Pavel Selin, one of the programme’s hosts, who also appeared as a witness yesterday.
Yuri Zak, one of Mr Lebedev’s lawyers, said that although there were obvious absurdities about the case, it was nothing unusual. “Unfortunately, many things are normal for Russian justice that shouldn’t be normal,” he said. “The case is comical, though it’s a sad comedy.”
The most notable absence in the courtroom is the man who instigated the charges – Mr Polonsky. His lawyers have told the court that he is unable to attend the hearings because he is not allowed to leave Cambodia, where a court has released him on bail on charges of assaulting local sailors. However, Mr Lebedev’s aides say they have evidence that Mr Polonsky left Cambodia long ago and is now in Israel. The tycoon has been active on social networks, publishing photographs of himself in beachside locations. Yesterday he wrote on his Twitter account that he would answer “any other question” but refused to give his location. Mr Zak said it was “ridiculous” to try the case without Mr Polonsky’s attendance because only he could explain how the “political hatred” supposedly manifested itself.
“This kind of common fracas would normally be dealt with by a local police officer,” said Dmitry Muratov, editor in chief of Novaya Gazeta, the investigative newspaper that is part-owned by Mr Lebedev. “This case has been under the personal control of [Alexander] Bastrykin, the head of the Investigative Committee. If Lebedev wasn’t so loud politically, and didn’t support Novaya, there would be much less attention around this.”
Mr Muratov, who has attended most of the trial hearings, said proceedings had bordered on the farcical. “I’ve seen a lot of absurd things in my time,” he said. “But to have witnesses who can’t remember anything, and admit in court that they were recruited when getting off the number 75 bus – that’s something new.”
The trial has now been adjourned for three weeks. The judge granted Mr Lebedev permission to leave Russia during the break in hearings. When the trial resumes, on 21 June, it is expected to reach a swift conclusion.
Prominent economist flees Russia
One of Russia’s most prominent economists has fled the country, saying he fears he could be arrested and jailed as part of an investigation into the jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, formerly Russia’s richest man.
Sergei Guriev, who ran Moscow’s New Economic School, was known as a respected liberal economic voice and an adviser to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s team, which has lost out in Kremlin struggles to a more hardline faction since President Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency last year.
Mr Guriev has left all his positions and moved to Paris, where his wife, also an economist, moved three years ago. “She turned out to be a wiser and more sane person than I was,” he told the Associated Press, saying they had argued about the direction in which Russia was headed. “I was less cynical, she was more.”
After investigators searched his office and seized documents and emails, Mr Guriev said he feared he could end up arrested on “very bogus grounds”.
He co-authored a 2011 report into the prosecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, formerly the head of the Yukos oil giant but in jail since 2003 in a case widely seen as politically motivated. He has also backed the prominent Kremlin critic and anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, who is currently on trial for embezzlement in charges that also have a political dimension.
Austin this is simply nonsense - have you seen the number of billionaire oligarchs in Russia? It hasn't gone down one bit since Putin! Moscow's market for superluxury goods and services is bigger than ever.Austin wrote:As soon as Putin took over the first thing he did was threw these Oligarchs away and nationalised the state property not all but many of them. Some of them left Russia and got asylum in UK.
Russia's economic turnaround was entirely driven by the soaring prices for oil and metals, which are Russia's main exports - the 1990s saw oil at a historic low point.Compare the stastics when Putin first because the President of Russia the GDP was $195 Billion and in 2013 during this 3rd stint as president Russian GDP is $ 2000 Billion more than 10x time growth in GDP.
http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2012/12/18/171030/73"It is difficult to escape the sense that [Mrs Litvinenko] has been shoved, shunted and pushed around by all the forces of Her Majesty's Government in order to attempt to coerce her into abandoning her search for the truth about her husband's death."
Conceding Lugovoi's claims.
The statements by counsel for Marina Litvinenko were, in fact, much more peculiar than has generally been recognised. In attempting to use what Litvinenko was supposed to have told the investigators to bolster the case against the Russian Government, Mr Emmerson QC effectively conceded that a whole range of claims made by his client and associates of Litvinenko have been lies.
Critically, his statements make a further stage in the admission that claims by Lugovoi about the involvement of Litvinenko with MI6 which, for almost five years, had been contemptuously repudiated by his widow and others as a `smokescreen', are in substantial measure true.
In an interview published in Izvestiya on 4 June 2006, in the wake of the CPS request for his extradition, Lugovoi stated both that Litvinenko had been recruited by MI6, and that he had `a handler, a person who knows about all his meetings and contacts': going on to argue that `British intelligence must have known whether Litvinenko's death was accidental, a result of handling polonium incautiously' - or, at the least, that `they must have known he was handling polonium.'
Two days after the initial pre-inquest review, where counsel for Lugovoi argued that the possibility that Litvinenko's death was accident or suicide should be investigated, Marina Litvinenko conceded that her husband had been employed by MI6. But she restricted his involvement to consultancy work, over a period of a year in relation to an operation to combat Russian organised crime in Europe: work done both for MI6 and MI5, for which, supposedly, he was paid tens of thousands of pounds.
All those accounts in which, having been cast off by his long-term patron the erstwhile oligarch Boris Berezovsky, an impoverished Litvinenko had been forced into `due diligence' work, could now be shifted over onto the fiction shelves: and their authors exposed as having either been disseminating disinformation, or gullibly accepting it. Now, moreover, a great deal more has been conceded, as according to Mr Emmerson QC `at the time of his death, Mr Litvinenko had been, for a number of years, a registered and paid agent of MI6, with a dedicated handler, whose pseudonym was "Martin".' What however has not been conceded is the claim that `Martin' must have known that Litvinenko was handling polonium.
PS:The case of the "teapot" that like the dog that did not bark in the night,in a Sherlock Holmes case,is most intriguing.it suddenly appeared days later in a 'hot" lethal condition,but did not do so when Litvinenko supposedly drank from it,as he lingered on in this report for weeks! It appears that a set-up was in play.
The widow of murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko has suffered a "near-complete collapse of confidence" in the inquest into his death and will cease to participate unless an urgent public inquiry into the killing is ordered to replace it.
Lawyers for Marina Litvinenko, whose husband was poisoned with radioactive polonium in London in 2006, told a pre-inquest hearing at the High Court in London that the Government was leading a campaign to "coerce" her into giving up her attempts to establish why he was murdered.
Sir Robert Owen, the coroner, was told by lawyers for the Home Secretary Theresa May that his request to halt the inquest and replace it with a public inquiry, which would be able to hear secret evidence about issues including whether the killing was ordered by the Russian state, was being considered "at a very high level" of government.
In bitter exchanges arising from the ongoing the wrangle over what form of judicial process should be used to answer the questions about Mr Litvinenko's death, lawyers for Mrs Litvinenko accused the Government of doing its best to avoid establishing the truth about what took place.
The Government has succeeded in withholding some information from the public proceedings on the grounds of national security and argued that the inquest should continue - despite a statement from Sir Robert that he considers that the removal of the evidence makes it impossible for him to answer key questions such as whether there was state involvement in Mr Litvinenko's death.
Mr Litvinenko's family believe that the former Russian intelligence officer was working for MI6 at the time of this death and his murder was carried out on the orders of the Kremlin. They want to know whether the British authorities could have prevented the killing.
The 43-year-old father-of-one was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 while drinking tea at the Millennium Hotel in London's Grosvenor Square in November 2006. Andrei Lugovoi, a former officer with the FSB, the successor to the KGB, was charged with the killing but Russia refused his extradition, plunging Anglo-Russian relations into their worst crisis since the Cold War.
Ben Emmerson QC, for Mrs Litvinenko, said: "The position of Her Majesty's Government is that it is better for the administration of justice in the country to have an inquiry that cannot get to the truth than one that can."
He added: "It is difficult to escape the sense that [Mrs Litvinenko] has been shoved, shunted and pushed around by all the forces of Her Majesty's Government in order to attempt to coerce her into abandoning her search for the truth about her husband's death."
The hearing was told that unless a public inquiry was now forthcoming from the Government, she would drop out of the inquest process and seek a judicial review of any failure to order such an inquiry.
Mr Emmerson said alleged attempts to pressure Mrs Litvinenko had reached a new level in the last fortnight when a visit by Prime Minister David Cameron to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin had coincided with a direct phone call to her from the personal assistant of Foreign Office minister David Lidington to explain the nature of the talks and that the Government was still committed to a "full investigation" into her husband's death.
The hearing was told that the direct approach was made without the knowledge or participation of Mrs Litvinenko's lawyers. Mr Emmerson, who noted that his client was still waiting after seven months for a decision on whether her legal representation will be publicly funded, said: "It is a matter of the gravest concern that this type of approach is taking place."
Neil Garnham QC, for the Home Secretary, said Mr Lidington's staff had merely placed the call out of courtesy to Mrs Litvinenko to inform her about the nature of the talks between Mr Cameron and Mr Putin ahead of media reports, adding that the Government "wholeheartedly rejects" the claims about its conduct towards Mrs Litvinenko.
When asked how long it would take for ministers to decide on whether a public inquiry will now be granted, Mr Garnham said the Government was aware of the urgency of the matter.
A suspicious circumstance, which AJStrata and copydude have discussed at length, is the mysterious appeararance in an ABC report in late January last year of claims of a 'hot' teapot at the Millennium, supposedly giving an 'off-the-charts' reading for polonium. While the teapot was said to have been discovered in early December, journalists had for no very obvious reason been kept in the dark about this supposedly decisive piece of evidence. The detailed account of contamination at the Millennium in the (BBC) Panorama programme, which went out just days before the ABC report, makes no mention of it.
How the dose could have been strong enough to leave such a high reading after six weeks of cleaning, while weak enough to take three weeks to kill Litvinenko, does seem a puzzle. And given that the teapot appears in an ABC programme in which an unnamed 'senior official' is quoted as saying investigators have concluded that Litvinenko's death was a 'state-sponsored' assassination, the suspicion arises that disinformation is at issue.
Would it be right to say that tensions between Muslims and Orthodox believers in Russian have recently been on the rise?
You can judge for yourself: the "Vesti Nedeli" TV programme recently reported that Stavropol Territory had lost some 20 percent of its Russian-speaking population. It is reported that non-Muslims are leaving Dagestan. I would not want similar reports to start coming from Tatarstan as well. Should that happen, our country will fall apart.
The key to peace and accord in Tatarstan lies on the national mentality, as Tatars are known for their tolerance. We have always been peaceful neighbours to Russian Orthodox believers and to Jews alike. However, the younger generation is growing less tolerant. One look at websites devoted to Islam would be enough: for each website devoted to "traditional" Islam, there are over 20 those that promote Wahabism, Salafism.
• Deals with an estimated total worth of about $300 bln have been signed at St. Petersburg forum.
• More than 100 investment deals and letters of intent have been inked.
• 25-year deal between CNPC and Russian oil giant Rosneft has an estimated value of $270 bln.
ST. PETERSBURG, June 22 (Xinhua) -- Deals with an estimated total worth of about 9.6 trillion rubles (about 300 billion U.S. dollars) have been signed during an economic forum held in the Russian city of St. Petersburg, the Russian authorities said on Saturday.
More than 100 investment deals and letters of intent have been inked during the three-day St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) starting on Thursday, Russian Deputy Economic Development Minister Sergei Belyakov told reporters here.
Among them is a 25-year deal between China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and Russian oil giant Rosneft, which alone has an estimated value of 270 billion dollars.
Other major contracts include an agreement on liquefied natural gas (LNG) deliveries via the South Stream pipeline between Rosneft and Electricity of France.
CNPC has also struck a deal with Russian LNG operator Novatek on the acquisition of a 20-percent stake of the Yamal LNG project.
SPIEF, which has been held annually since 1997, attracted this year more than 5,000 finance specialists, banking industry representatives and senior government officials from more than 70 countries.
165-km connection between Iran and Azerbaijan would help Indian goods reach Russia and former Soviet republics via Bandar Abbas.
India is keen to persuade Iran to build the 165-kilometre missing rail link between Rasht, Iran, and Astara, Azerbaijan, Mint said on its website. The connection would help facilitate Indian access to the markets of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Russia, the paper said.
Recently, a meeting was held in Azerbaijan, in which eight countries interested in the rail link project participated, according to the paper. The Indian delegation consisted of commerce ministry officials and officials from the rail ministry and Rail India Technical and Economic Services (RITES). According to the report, India came up with an initiative to provide consulting services through RITES to complete the railway project at the earliest.
“If this rail corridor is completed, we will have access to Russia and the CIS countries through the land route, which could give us substantial market access,” Mint quoted an anonymous Indian commerce ministry official as saying.
The rail corridor could become an alternative to the Suez Canal that India uses now to deliver goods to the countries to which it doesn’t have land access. With the railway link, India would be able to ferry goods from India through Iran into the CIS countries using the Bandar Abbas port, thus reducing the distance drastically, the paper said, adding that for the project to go ahead Iran’s clearance is needed.
Mint quoted a senior official at RITES, also speaking on grounds of anonymity, who said the state-owned company has submitted a proposal for a project feasibility study. “Iran is yet to give its clearance for the project. It is expected by 31 July,” he said. The cost of the project could vary depending on the kind of track that is laid, he said. “It could be a single track or double track, and the material used will determine the price.”
The timing for boosting the trade with the CIS countries seems just right as according to the commerce ministry official cited earlier in the report, the CIS countries’ account in India’s total trade diminished significantly from the 30 percent share in the 1990s to just 1 percent now.
A possibility of a comprehensive trade pact with the Eurasian Customs Union, which was discussed between India’s trade minister Anand Sharma and Viktor Khristenko, chairman of the Eurasian Economic Commission, at the sidelines of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum is also on the agenda of increasing India’s economic cooperation with the CIS countries.
Russian Railways keen to participate in Indian track electrificationThe Russian manufacturer of tanks and railway cars offers joint development of freight wagons and establishment of assembly lines using the latest technology.
The Russian company sees opportunities in assisting the Indian Railways in its modernisation plan, which includes electrification of 2000 km of tracks annually.
I looked at this route years ago. It won't help reduce India's freight cost, (because freight rates are not entirely related toAustin wrote:Not sure even if this is possible but interesting news in deed.
India looks to access Russia, CIS through missing rail link
165-km connection between Iran and Azerbaijan would help Indian goods reach Russia and former Soviet republics via Bandar Abbas.
India is keen to persuade Iran to build the 165-kilometre missing rail link between Rasht, Iran, and Astara, Azerbaijan, Mint said on its website. The connection would help facilitate Indian access to the markets of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Russia, the paper said.
Recently, a meeting was held in Azerbaijan, in which eight countries interested in the rail link project participated, according to the paper. The Indian delegation consisted of commerce ministry officials and officials from the rail ministry and Rail India Technical and Economic Services (RITES). According to the report, India came up with an initiative to provide consulting services through RITES to complete the railway project at the earliest.
“If this rail corridor is completed, we will have access to Russia and the CIS countries through the land route, which could give us substantial market access,” Mint quoted an anonymous Indian commerce ministry official as saying.
The rail corridor could become an alternative to the Suez Canal that India uses now to deliver goods to the countries to which it doesn’t have land access. With the railway link, India would be able to ferry goods from India through Iran into the CIS countries using the Bandar Abbas port, thus reducing the distance drastically, the paper said, adding that for the project to go ahead Iran’s clearance is needed.
Mint quoted a senior official at RITES, also speaking on grounds of anonymity, who said the state-owned company has submitted a proposal for a project feasibility study. “Iran is yet to give its clearance for the project. It is expected by 31 July,” he said. The cost of the project could vary depending on the kind of track that is laid, he said. “It could be a single track or double track, and the material used will determine the price.”
The timing for boosting the trade with the CIS countries seems just right as according to the commerce ministry official cited earlier in the report, the CIS countries’ account in India’s total trade diminished significantly from the 30 percent share in the 1990s to just 1 percent now.
A possibility of a comprehensive trade pact with the Eurasian Customs Union, which was discussed between India’s trade minister Anand Sharma and Viktor Khristenko, chairman of the Eurasian Economic Commission, at the sidelines of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum is also on the agenda of increasing India’s economic cooperation with the CIS countries.
Few people know that Russian railways have an incredible high `on time performance' (I've made 100+ journeys across the countryAustin wrote:Uralvagonzavod to cooperate with Indian Railways
Russian Railways keen to participate in Indian track electrificationThe Russian manufacturer of tanks and railway cars offers joint development of freight wagons and establishment of assembly lines using the latest technology.
The Russian company sees opportunities in assisting the Indian Railways in its modernisation plan, which includes electrification of 2000 km of tracks annually.
(combined with hiring a chessboard, its led to several memorable journeys).