Translated material
Notes on the margins of Sydney
Australia surprised Vladimir Putin
Most participants in the 15th Asia-Pacific Cooperation (APEC) summit , which ended in Sydney, will apparently consider it a success. Firstly, because this city in the south of Australia is too nice: amazingly clean, amazingly beautiful, unusually hospitable and calm. Even in those days that it hosted numerous delegations from the 21st economy (as it is politically correct to call APEC participants, including Taiwan, which broke away from China and does not have a seat in the UN, as well as Hong Kong, which was admitted to China in 1997 as a “special region” ").This impression could not be spoiled even by several thousand anti-globalists, who managed to carry out their duty rally during the days of the summit so peacefully and orderly that they seemed to disappoint a significant part of the journalistic corps, who were eager for violent clashes between demonstrators and the police. However, the police, who clearly outnumbered the opposing side, were ready for any surprises. Armored vehicles with water cannons and buses for transporting prisoners were hidden in the alleys. And, as ITAR-TASS correspondents cite their sources in Sydney, the day before several hundred petty offenders were sent home from the local prison to make room for detained demonstrators.
But all these preparations turned out to be unnecessary. Only a dozen demonstrators were arrested. Two of them are nudists who, in the cold rain, decided to habitually expose the back of their bodies, sticking it out towards the imaginary George W. Bush. Another entertaining sight was a column of dignified gentlemen dressed all in black, with bowler hats on their heads. They carried "Billionaires for Bush" banners. This is what pacifists and “greens” called their parody movement, marching under the slogans “Let’s increase emissions of harmful gases into the atmosphere in the name of sacred corporate profits!”, “Expand the war in Iraq - we need Arab oil!”
And who knows whether these jokers managed to attract the attention of the public - after all, anti-Bush escapades have long ceased to surprise anyone. However, the US President himself revived interest in himself with his new “Bushisms.” He did this on the eve of the opening of the APEC summit, pronouncing this name (in English it sounds APEC) as OPEC (organization of oil exporters). Then Bush again made a funny slip, saying that Australian Prime Minister John Howard visited “Austrian” troops (instead of Australian ones) in Iraq last year.
The Russian president also made jokes in Sydney. Unlike “friend George,” he did this deliberately. Speaking during a joint breakfast with John Howard, Vladimir Putin was “surprised” by the new knowledge he received in Sydney about the details of the personal life of the head of the Russian Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky. It turns out that during his stay in Australia, Kerensky married “a media representative” here. “This is some kind of unnatural union of power and the press,” Putin noted with a slight smile, “apparently from grief, from the loss of power and in a state of passion or something else that forced him to go from mistake to mistake.”
It was clear that Putin’s humor was not understood by everyone. The Australian public clapped for him after this phrase, more out of politeness. In addition, the Australians had no idea that one of Putin’s best friends was the ex-Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schröder, although his fourth wife was a journalist...
One way or another, the “excellent sense of humor and good mood of the participants” of the Sydney summit “pleased” the deputy head of Gazprom, Alexander Medvedev, one of three Russian representatives on the APEC Business Advisory Council. Following Putin, Mr. Medvedev was also amazed that “Kerensky found a wife in Australia.” In contrast to the anti-globalists, President Bush received special praise, quite seriously, from the top manager of Gazprom. “He consistently defends the interests of his state and sets a good example for other countries in the region,” Mr. Medvedev said.
The point was that Bush, even in Sydney, did not abandon any hope that the United States would agree to limit its emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But it was precisely combating climate change, at the initiative of the host of the APEC summit, Australia, that became its main topic. This was the subject of a separate declaration adopted in Sydney, contrary to all traditions, on the first day of the summit, September 8. There were two reasons for this: firstly, on the evening of that day George Bush was leaving Sydney for a good reason - he had important meetings on Iraq. And secondly, the Sydney Declaration on Climate Change, Energy Security and Clean Development itself did not contain any specific obligations of the participating countries to limit carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. The document only outlined the general goal of reducing such emissions by 25% by 2030 (these are much less ambitious plans than, for example, those sought by Germany this year as chairman of the G8). And also: the intention to work to increase the forest area in the countries of the region by 20 million hectares by 2020.
Due to its declarative nature, the document could not cause heated discussions, also because the Australians proposed its draft for discussion very late, only at the end of August. The holding of the APEC summit this year also turned out to be shifted a month or two earlier than usual - as a rule, the organization's annual forums are held in October-November. However, the summit was held ahead of schedule due to the fact that parliamentary elections are coming up in Australia in December (thereby Australia also shortened its chairmanship in APEC). So consensus on the Sydney climate declaration was secured in advance...
The interests of Russia, as the members of its delegation unanimously asserted in Sydney, were in no way harmed by this. Moreover, all Moscow’s initiatives were taken into account in the summit documents. So, in any case, says the director of the department of ASEAN countries and pan-Asian problems of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bakhtiyar Khakimov, who oversees the problems of the SCO and APEC on Smolenskaya Square. This applies to the Russian proposal to take over the coordination of cooperation on the protection of key energy infrastructure, and to the continuation of the so-called dialogue on non-ferrous metals, and to joint actions on counter-terrorism. And finally, Moscow’s decision to allocate $500,000 to the APEC special fund was approved (recall that exactly the same amount was allocated at last year’s summit in Hanoi and the United States).
According to Mr. Khakimov, this became possible thanks to the basic principles of cooperation within APEC - voluntariness and consensus. Moreover, the Russian diplomat says, the development of these principles in APEC could become an exemplary model for the future world order. After all, as the Sydney Declaration emphasizes, it is necessary to “respect the circumstances within APEC countries and their capabilities” and strive for “flexibility in approaches.” For example, most summit participants agreed that the creation of a free trade area in the APEC region is being pushed into the distant future.
Russian Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref believes that the discussions in Sydney made it possible to concretize the process of negotiations on Russia's accession to the WTO. Our country remains the only (!) country in APEC that is not a member of the WTO, and yet, as Mr. Gref sadly notes, a few years ago there were three such countries, but China and Vietnam were admitted to this club during this time. The head of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade remarked to reporters with some sad pride: “Russia, in its quest to join the WTO, held the largest number of negotiations, and no one could have imagined that at the last moment three more countries would want to start bilateral negotiations with us again.” We are apparently talking about Georgia, Cambodia and Saudi Arabia, with which Moscow hopes to enter into such negotiations as early as September. In general, says German Gref, in Sydney a “weekly schedule” was drawn up for multilateral negotiations on accession to the WTO by the end of this year. However, the head of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade no longer undertakes to predict whether Moscow will be able to join the WTO at least in 2008...
German Gref shared with journalists another of his sadnesses associated with Sydney. It turns out that Australia remains almost the only country in the world that does not recognize Russia as a country with a market economy. Moreover, in 2003, according to Mr. Gref, Canberra made a decision that was the opposite.
“How can this be? - a Vremya Novostei correspondent asked the minister. “After all, the Australians did not object to the acquisition of large assets of Australian mining companies by companies from a country with a non-market economy, RUSAL and Norilsk Nickel?” “So the leader of the Australian opposition, Kevin Rudd, calls this decision illogical,” Mr. Gref threw up his hands.
It turned out that these words were spoken by the main Australian oppositionist, the leader of the Labor Party, who, according to all sociologists’ forecasts, to the prime minister’s post based on the results of the December parliamentary elections, said during the very meeting of Putin with the business community of Australia, at which the Russian president was “surprised” by Kerensky’s marriage on the journalist. Apparently, it was these words of the opposition leader that forced Putin to express “regret that there are no representatives of the opposition in the Russian delegation, although it also exists in our country.” Obviously, Putin felt it necessary to emphasize the latter especially so that those in distant Australia would know how much Russia has changed in recent years. Moreover, the second president of Russia became the first head of Russian state to visit the fifth continent in the entire 200-year history of Russian-Australian relations.
The main result of the Sydney summit for Russia was the approval by its participants of the proposal to hold the 2012 summit in Russia . Moreover, as Russian officials especially emphasize, formally we are not talking about a summit on Russky Island near Vladivostok, where active preparations for this event have already begun. The Russian side itself has the right to decide on the location of the summit, preferably in the Asia-Pacific zone. On the other hand, the Australian Prime Minister Howard’s remark, made seriously but then turned into a joke, that holding the 2012 APEC summit in Russia would be “excellent, especially if it is held in St. Petersburg,” has every theoretical right to be prophetic. Why not, if by the fall of 2012 Putin can again take his usual presidential seat in the Kremlin in order to go to St. Petersburg to preside over APEC. The schedule of summits until 2012 looks like this: 2008 - Peru, 2009 - Singapore, 2010 - Japan, 2011 - USA.
The rest of the events in Sydney, of interest both to Russia and to the rest of the world, took place, as they say, “on the sidelines” of the summit. Which, obviously, will be remembered precisely because of these events much more than the meeting of APEC leaders. However, this can also be owed to the Australians, who dared to combine the APEC forum with bilateral visits to Australia by the presidents of the United States, Russia and the President of the People's Republic of China. Such a good joke was written about how an Australian, a Russian, an American and a Chinese once met...
First, a massive deal was concluded in Sydney for China to buy liquefied natural gas from Australia worth $45 billion.
Secondly, a Russian-Australian agreement was concluded in Sydney on the purchase of uranium ore in Australia. However, taking into account the fact that it must be ratified by the parliaments of both countries, the first contracts for the supply of uranium to Russia may not be signed earlier than the fall of next year.
And finally, in Sydney these days it became known about a serious breakthrough in resolving the crisis around the North Korean nuclear program. President Bush said that the United States is ready to begin negotiations with the DPRK on concluding a peace treaty with it half a century after the end of the war if Pyongyang abandons its nuclear program. And immediately after this, US Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill announced that tomorrow, September 11, American, Russian and Chinese experts will go to the DPRK to observe how North Korean nuclear facilities will be closed.
Just before leaving Sydney, Vladimir Putin met with representatives of the Russian diaspora in Australia, numbering about 200 thousand people and formed as a result of many historical waves of emigration, starting from the Civil War and ending with the years of perestroika. Putin promised to ease the visa regime for ethnic Russians to visit their historical homeland.
The Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs (VEB) and the Australian investment bank Macquarie Bank Limited signed a cooperation agreement, VEB said in a statement. The purpose of the agreement is to establish long-term partnerships in the field of investment financing, development and structuring of trade and economic relations between Russia and Australia. The agreement is also aimed at expanding the range of banking services provided by the parties to their clients conducting trading operations in Russia and the CIS countries. According to the document, the parties intend to jointly finance investment projects in these regions, including on the principles of public-private partnership, as well as jointly carry out guarantee and insurance operations. Priority will be given to projects in such industries as energy, mechanical engineering, shipbuilding and aircraft manufacturing, as well as projects in the field of infrastructure and ecology. According to VEB Chairman Vladimir Dmitriev, the signed agreements are extremely necessary for the development of cooperation between Russian industrial corporations in Australia: “Our work with Russian companies shows that they are extremely interested in significant financial support for the development of their activities. These agreements also insure the activities of both Russian and and Australian corporations".
In Sydney, the presidents of Russia and the United States held bilateral talks. The meeting of the two leaders, which took place at the Sidney Harbor Marriott hotel, where Vladimir Putin stayed during his stay in Sydney, lasted more than an hour, RIA Novosti reports. “We also talked about economic relations, about individual large projects in the implementation of which economic participants from both the Russian and American sides are interested,” the Russian President told reporters after the negotiations.
Putin said that together with Bush they outlined plans for future fishing: “We agreed that we would fish not only in the USA, but also somewhere on Siberian rivers.” As you know, the previous meeting of the presidents took place at the country estate of George Bush Sr. in Kennebunkport in the United States, where Putin went fishing with the former and current American president. Putin told reporters that he began his meeting with Bush by thanking him for the very warm welcome he received in Kennebunkport. Bush remarked with a smile: “Thank you, Vladimir. For a second I thought he remembered the Kennebunkport visit only to remind me that he was the only one who caught a fish there.”