Putin cut a good figure at G-8 conference

By Manfred Quiring

MOSCOW (DPA): Last weekend at the G-8 summit on Okinawa, new Russian President Vladimir Putin crowned his four short months in office with a dazzling display of flexible determination, affability and statesmanship in his first appearance at a gathering attended by several world leaders.

Russians savored the news that Putin had become the "star" of the summit and proved himself to be a team player with his newly cooled attitude toward Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

His performance on Okinawa has brought Putin, a former Russian intelligence agency officer, out from the shadow of his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, who always had problems finding the happy medium between forging new bonds with the West and effectively representing Russian interests. More than once, Yeltsin was known to slip into bluster and bombast.

Putin, who is just as determined to see his country in the role of a world power, has opted to take a more conciliatory tack and dump old ballast -- like Milosevic, for instance -- overboard.

With the help of a good team of foreign-policy advisors, Putin even managed to put U.S. President Bill Clinton on the back foot over his controversial National Missile Defense (NMD) anti- missile system that Russia opposes and many Europeans view sceptically.

North Korea's apparent willingness to scrap its missile program in exchange for other nations' help in launching North Korean satellites, as it seems to have promised Putin last week, certainly undercut the American arguments in favor of the system. Concern about the North Korean missile program is one of the reasons behind Clinton's great interest in the NMD.

Putin's apparent success with the North Koreans in that area left no hard feelings on Okinawa. Putin avoided focusing too much attention on the subject -- "I wasn't trying to cheat anyone, or drive anyone into the corner," he said.

"We are defending our position, drawing new arguments, and I had an impression that my arguments received a favorable impression."

President Clinton expressed reservations about North Korea's promise on the missile issue, saying it remains vague, and even Putin admitted he wasn't quite sure how to interpret it.

In his short time in office, Putin had already proven to the Americans that he is willing to work seriously towards arms control.

He has sent out signals that his government is ready to make further strategic arms cuts, and shortly after his inauguration, the Russian parliament, which he controls, approved the long- delayed START-II (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), clearing the way for START-III.

Putin's efforts -- with Communist Chinese support -- to create the "multi-polar" world so favored by Moscow political thinkers as a counterweight to the West met with less success.

The Russians know that two-thirds of their foreign trade is with the European Union and that mainland China is in no position to take over that role.

As Russia's links with the West grow stronger, its calls for multipolarity grow weaker and more symbolic.

Izvestia, a Russian paper with close ties to the Kremlin, happily reported from the summit that "Germany has returned to its usual role as the main lobbyist for Russian interests in the West.

"Moscow has missed Germany's intervention on Russia's behalf in the days since former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl left office.

The Russian war in Chechnya played no role in the G-8 summit, and Putin kept his partners happy with calls for a common front against international terrorism from the Philippines to Kosovo -- a subject that may also turn out to be his key to justifying his ever more repressive domestic policies.

Facing a seemingly never-ending war in the Caucasus, the Kremlin has turned up its pressure on the Russian media. Government representatives, trying to gag critical reporters, have called some journalists terrorists' "accomplices."

At the same time, his team has been trying to ramrod through what it calls "controlled democracy" -- where the power becomes more and more concentrated in the Kremlin and, with each step, less and less controllable.

Putin's government is working up new press and media policies as a response to answer criticism that the new president is moving alarmingly close to "a new totalitarian regime."

The author of the new policies is the Russian Security Council, which is riddled with secret police officers and secret service agents. The Kremlin, says political scientist Sergey Markov, is ready to go to extremes if necessary, regardless of the costs.

Four months of Putin-watching tell us that for the new Russian leader an authoritarian style of government is as necessary as a pragmatic meeting of the minds with the West -- a contradiction in terms of debatable significance.

And to top it all, many Russian hearts swelled with pride when they saw their 47-year-old president, who has a black belt in judo, also receiving the ultimate karate honor -- a ninth-degree black belt from the master of one of the major styles of the martial art in Okinawa.