Russian Firms Hoping To Win Iranian Space Contracts

CEP20000921000400 Moscow Vremya Novostey in Russian 21 Sep 00 p 3
[Yuriy Golotyuk report: "Laser Therapy: the United States Has Been Forced To Reconcile Itself to the Development of Russo-Iranian Relations"]

[FBIS Translated Text]
Washington has once again "caught Moscow out in secret dealings with Iran." News about this appeared the day before yesterday in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and yesterday their version was picked up by officials also. True, the favorite American topic--Russia's secret assistance to Iran in the building of weapons of mass destruction--acquired a very surprising interpretation on this occasion. We are no longer being threatened with new sanctions, and, moreover, Moscow has even come in for the Americans' public praise since, as Joseph Lockhart, White House press spokesman, said, Russia has agreed at the request of the United States to suspend the contract on the sale of laser technology to Iran.

Moscow has adopted a guarded attitude toward this praise. As a direct participant in recent negotiations with the United States on Iranian problems explained to the Vremya Novostey newspaper, there would not appear to be anything that the Americans have to thank us for: the contract for the delivery to Iran of lasers used in scientific research was physically fulfilled by Russian enterprises last year, consequently, the talk of its suspension is somewhat belated.

The latest fit of concern of the Americans was caused by a Russo-Iranian agreement, according to which the Petersburg Yefremov Research Institute undertook to transfer to its Iranian colleagues some laser technology for medical, industrial, and scientific purposes. But it was about the latter that American experts had serious doubts, figuring that the use of such costly technology in civilian nuclear engineering programs was irrational from the commercial standpoint. And, consequently, the Russian lasers were intended for the program involving the building of nuclear weapons, which Iran, the United States believes, is implementing in an atmosphere of extraordinary secrecy. According to Mr. Lockhart, this matter has already been discussed twice at the top level: US President Bill Clinton spoke about this with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at the Okinawa meeting of the Eight and in the course of the Millennium Summit in New York. And, what is more, on the latter occasion, the Americans themselves believe, they managed to put the squeeze on the Russian president, forcing him to promise to apply the brakes to the laser contract.

It is interesting that the Russian participants in the negotiations with the Americans are convinced, generally speaking, of entirely the opposite. According to our source, the tone of the Russo-American negotiations on nonproliferation problems was much smoother--without the former dramatic quality. Specifically, the Americans dropped their previous censure apropos Russo-Iranian cooperation in the space field (Tehrann is planning this fall to embark on the building of its own first Zohreh geostationary communications satellite, the contract for the development and manufacture of which our firms are hoping to obtain). We were presented with no new complaints, on the contrary, the Americans agreed that the sanctions imposed by the United States in 1998 in respect to two Russian organizations--the INOR Research and Production Center and the Polyus Research Association--should finally be lifted, the source told the Vremya Novostey newspaper.

Reference

The American pressure on Vladimir Putin has most likely to do not so much with the mysterious laser contract as, generally, with the new Russian policy in respect to military and military-technical cooperation with Iran that is being pursued by the present occupant of the Kremlin. Concluded in 1995 within the framework of the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, the agreement specified that Moscow would sign no new military contracts with Tehran. Our defense industry lost one of the most profitable customers for its products (Tehran paid approximately $4 billion for Russian fighters, tanks, submarines, SAM batteries, and other arms in the period 1990-1994 alone). According to Deputy Premier Ilya Klebanov, who is in charge in the government of issues pertaining to the military-industrial complex, for an unjustifiably long time Russia conducted no negotiations on this score either with the United States or with Iran, and it was only with the advent of Putin that some movement began. After Khasan Roukhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, had visited Moscow this January and a delegation of Russia's Ministry of Defense visited Tehran in the summer, the resumption of the two countries' military-technical cooperation came to be just a matter of time.

[Description of Source: Moscow Vremya Novostey in Russian -- daily paper created in May 2000 by disgruntled correspondents from Vremya MN, reportedly supported financially by Russia's Unified Energy System]

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