Zee Beam News

Feb. 07, 2007 Kommersant - by Dmitry Sidorov, Gennady Sysoyev - The United States has recently had some sharp words for Russia regarding the new charges that have been filed against former Yukos executives Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. According to the US State Department, these actions "raise serious questions about the rule of law in Russia." Kommersant has also obtained a copy of a letter to the State Department from Congressman Tom Lantos, the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, in which Mr. Lantos maintains that the Yukos executives have been imprisoned "for their political activities, which threatened Putin's totalitarian regime." Mr. Khodorkovsky's arrest in 2003 was followed by demands in the US to bar Russia from the G8 group of leading industrialized nations. This time around, the US government might just let the ball roll in that direction. At a briefing in Washington on Monday evening, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, "the continued prosecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the dismantlement of Yukos raise serious questions about the rule of law in Russia." Though Mr. McCormack was responding to a question from a journalist at the briefing, he read from a pre-prepared statement. "Khodorkovsky and his associate, Platon Lebedev, would have been eligible to apply for parole this year, having served half of their terms. These new charges would likely preclude their early release," said Mr. McCormack, adding that "many of the actions in the case against Khodorkovsky and Yukos have raised serious concerns about the independence of courts, sanctity of contracts and property rights, and the lack of a predictable tax regime" in Russia. Mr. McCormack's conclusions were unwelcome for Russia: after noting that "the conduct of Russian authorities in the Khodorkovsky Yukos affair has eroded Russia's reputation and confidence in Russian legal and judicial institutions," he went on to warn that Washington will not shy away from expressing its concern over Moscow's behavior "at an appropriate time and at the appropriate level." Kommersant has also learned that Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA), the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, sent a critical letter that same day to Barry Lowenkron, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, who is responsible for preparing the State Department's annual report on the situation of human rights in different countries (the report for 2006 will be issued in March). In his letter, of which Kommersant has obtained a copy, Mr. Lantos requests that Mr. Lowenkron include the phrase "Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are political prisoners" in the section of the report that deals with Russia. He also insists that the former Yukos executives "are imprisoned not for any crime that they committed but for their political activities, which threatened Putin's totalitarian regime." Washington's reaction to the new charges filed against the former heads of Yukos is much stronger than the State Department's response immediately after the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in October 2003. Then, a spokesman said only that "the actions taken against Mr. Khodorkovsky testify to the selective nature of justice in Russia." The torch of indignation was taken up only a month after Mr. Khodorkovsky's arrest by the US Congress, where Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain co-sponsored a resolution with Representative Lantos demanding that the president exclude Russia from the Group of 8. Russia has been a member of the group since 1997. The initiative failed to gain sufficient support from either congressional leaders or the White House, however, and in December 2003 the Senate passed a watered-down resolution calling on "the law enforcement and judicial authorities of the Russian Federation [to] ensure that Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky is accorded the full measure of his rights under the Russian Constitution to defend himself against any and all charges that may be brought against him, in a fair and transparent process, so that individual justice may be done, but also so that the efforts the Russian Federation has been making to reform its system of justice may be seen to be moving forward." Additionally, in March 2004 the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee adopted a resolution that called for Russia to be barred from continued membership in the Group of 8. The president, however, chose to ignore the resolution. As a spokesman for the State Department told Kommersant then, "congressman are always coming up with some kind of resolution - that's their job." Today the situation is a little bit different. Since November of last year, the US Congress has been in the hands of the Democrats, who traditionally take a harder line in relation to rights and freedoms in Russia. Thus, the chances are significantly greater now that a resolution similar to that proposed in 2003 will reappear on the congressional agenda. Relations between the White House and the Kremlin are also more critical than they were three years ago. As State Department spokesman Sean McCormack pointed out, "such actions as this and other cases raise questions about Russia's commitment to the responsibilities which all democratic, free-market economies countries embrace." The mood in Washington was indirectly confirmed for Kommersant by Terry Davidson, the chief of the State Department's European division press service, who said in a conversation with our correspondent that assistant secretary of state for European affairs Dan Fried has said numerous times that the US will no hesitate to let Russia know about any concerns that might arise. A source close to the White House, who spoke on condition of anonymity, expressed Washington's concerns more openly: "the 2008 presidential elections in Russia mean that the Kremlin has to keep Khodorkovsky and Lebedev in jail and to not let them have any chance of early release." The press office of the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry said that there is so far no official reaction to the US State Department's statement. "We will need to see what this turns into," said a senior Russian diplomat. "But in principle we're starting from the point that everything we're doing is by the books."