the following message, which was posted
on the cyberjournal list, might perhaps fan
the flames of healthy skepticism in Tresy,
if the likes of people like her still take this
list 'seriously'.
---<forwarded message>---
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1998 00:59:34 -0300
To: [log in to unmask]
From: [log in to unmask] (Jan Slakov)
Subject: Russian view of bombings
---<fwd>---
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 05:24:52 -0400
From: Eric Fawcett <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] [and others]
Subject: s4pNewsletter
Subject: U.S. bombs scared Russia: extract from CDI Russia Weekly
<snip>
#2: Moscow Times, August 27, 1998
DEFENSE DOSSIER: U.S. Bombs Scared Russia
By Pavel Felgenhauer
Last Friday Yeltsin denounced the bombing of alleged terrorist targets
in Sudan and Afghanistan by the United States. Yeltsin said "his
attitude is negative as it would be to any act of terrorism, military
interference or failure to solve a problem through talks." Yeltsin's
press secretary, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, watered down Yeltsin's statement
and the free fall of the ruble virtually blackened out this news item in
Moscow.
In Washington, White House national security adviser Sandy Berger
predicted those comments would not sour the atmosphere when Yeltsin and
U.S. President Bill Clinton meet in Moscow early next month. In Moscow
many agree. It is reported that more than 70 U.S. Tomahawk cruise
missiles hit Afghan territory controlled by the Moslem fundamentalist
Taliban militia. But Moscow considers the Taliban a serious security
threat. For some time the Russian authorities have been helping the
anti-Taliban forces and feared that the United States was in its turn
secretly supporting the Taliban.
This alleged U.S.-Taliban alliance has surely been broken. It is
reported that as a result of the Tomahawk attack, the U.S. Unocal Corp.
has postponed all work on building a $2 billion pipeline to bring
Turkmen natural gas via Afghanistan to the Pakistan Indian Ocean port of
Karachi for export. This leaves the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom in full
control of all Turkmen gas exports. With Viktor Chernomyrdin back at the
helm in Moscow, what is good for Gazprom will also be, mostly,
officially considered good for Russia.
Badly bruised by scandal and crisis at home, Yeltsin and Clinton will,
most likely, do their best to make the coming summit a success the same
way former U.S. President Richard Nixon indulged in foreign policy and
detente with the Soviet Union as the Watergate scandal unfolded.
However, it should be remembered that Yeltsin made his uncompromising
remarks on board the Russian navy's flagship -- the Pyotr Veliky nuclear
cruiser -- after conferring with his military chiefs. The Russian
military also does not particularly like the Taliban. Still, the U.S.
military action is seen as setting a very dangerous precedent and also
as an example of possible future threats Russia may face.
The U.S. attack happened less than two weeks after the terrorist
bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The Washington Post has reported that
plans to attack the alleged terrorist targets linked to the Saudi
dissident millionaire Osama bin Laden were approved by a White House
national security team five days after the embassy bombings. Clinton
officially approved the plan of attack one week after the terrorist
bombings and one week before U.S. military action was taken.
Russian military analysts say that the promptness of this response to
terrorism proves the U.S. attack was fully planned and prepared months
ago and the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania were only a pretext for a
final go ahead.
The sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missile is not a weapon that one can
fire at an unforeseen enemy. This "smart" missile has a guidance system
with components that make course corrections for pinpoint accuracy. To
determine the missile's location, one component compares terrain with
satellite photographs of Earth stored in on board computers. Another
component receives data from GPS satellites that provide guidance.
This means that any Tomahawk attack should be preceded by a long period
of intelligence gathering and accurate spy satellite mapping to
determine the exact target positions and missile approach routes.
Persistent fog or low clouds can postpone targeting procedures for
weeks, sometimes months. It took months to prepare Tomahawk missile
attacks against Iraq after the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, since the
previously prepared U.S. cruise missile targets were all in Russia and
not near Baghdad. Even if the U.S. authorities are right and the
demolished El Shifa Pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum was indeed involved
in making VX nerve gas, it obviously had no connection to the Kenya and
Tanzania bombings. No gas was used in those bombs. The plant was a
preplanned target and Russian generals are afraid their U.S.
counterparts have more such "terrorist targets" in military plans of
sudden worldwide "pinpoint" attacks. Future Tomahawk recipients may be
Russian friends, not the Taliban. A new, pro-Communist Russian
government may demand some response from its military, and that is a
prospect the rundown, unfed and unpaid Russian army fears most of all.
Pavel Felgenhauer is defense and national security affairs editor of
Segodnya [TODAY]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
a political discussion forum - [log in to unmask]
To subscribe, send any message to [log in to unmask]
A public service of Citizens for a Democratic Renaissance
(mailto:[log in to unmask] http://cyberjournal.org)
----------------------------------------------------------
Non-commercial reposting is hereby approved,
but please include the sig up through this paragraph
and retain any internal credits and copyright notices.
.---------------------------------------------------------
To see the index of the cj archives, send any message to:
[log in to unmask]
To subscribe to our activists list, send any message to:
[log in to unmask]
Help create the Movement for a Democratic Rensaissance
----------------------------------------------
crafted in Ireland by rkm
-----------------------------------
A community will evolve only when
the people control their means of communication.
-- Frantz Fanon
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [log in to unmask]
For additional commands, e-mail: [log in to unmask]
|
