Translated material
The Baroness was reminded of her youth
A Soviet dissident spoke about how the Kremlin's money is connected to the head of European diplomacy
The head of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, recently announced the distribution of portfolios in the new composition of the EU executive body. Barroso will have seven deputies, including High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton, who will serve as first deputy. All candidates will undergo hearings in the European Parliament, and the commission as a whole should be approved at the end of January. The mandate of the new European Commission runs until October 31, 2014.Just over a week ago, on November 19, EU leaders appointed Baroness Ashton as the first “foreign minister” in the history of the European Union. This post is being introduced for the first time by the Lisbon Treaty, which provides for the reform of EU institutions and comes into force from tomorrow. However, political opponents accuse 53-year-old Catherine Ashton of secretly receiving money from the Soviet Union a quarter of a century ago.
Member of the European Parliament from the British Independence Party Gerard Batten sent a letter to Barroso demanding to find out whether the baroness was involved in receiving funds paid by Moscow in the 1980s to the British public organization Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). He claims that as a result of an audit in 1982-1983, it was revealed that the NRC could not name the source of origin of 176 thousand 197 pounds sterling (about 300 thousand dollars) received as donations.
Catherine Ashton was the treasurer of the NRC at that time and, according to the author of the letter, should have known about the origin of this amount. As for the source of this money, with reference to the famous Soviet dissident and human rights activist Vladimir Bukovsky, who now lives in the UK, MP Batten states that the funds “most likely” came from the Kremlin.
In an interview with Vremya Novostei, 66-year-old Vladimir Bukovsky said that in the early 1980s he wrote a long article for the Times newspaper about how the CPSU Central Committee provides financial support to European communist parties and social movements: “Of course, no official I didn’t have any data on this at the time. The article was written on the basis of a not very complex analysis, from which it followed that without financial investments from Moscow, these parties and movements simply would not have survived.” After the collapse of the USSR in 1992, VN’s interlocutor managed to continue the investigation: “For a short time, I gained access to the archives of the Central Committee and found documents there that confirmed my analytical assumptions. There were, in particular, decisions of the Secretariat of the Central Committee on the direction of funds to the British communists and associated left-wing organizations that advocated peace and disarmament. The money was transferred “to strengthen the influence of the Communist Party among British peace movements.”
Among these public organizations, the NRC was mentioned, and the source of sponsorship money for it was a certain Howard, a member of the Communist Party. So “the thread is very clearly visible.” Vladimir Bukovsky admitted that the name Catherine Ashton “was not and could not be in the documents of the Central Committee. They were not talking about people, but about organizations. Moreover, the future baroness was then a little over 20 years old, and the Kremlin bosses were hardly interested in her activities.”
Catherine Ashton in her youth adhered to left-radical views and took an active part in the activities of organizations protesting against the policies of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She later joined the respectable Labor Party, where she quickly rose to prominent roles. Ashton served in the Labor government for ten years in the Departments of Education, Constitutional Affairs and Justice. In 2007, the Baroness was appointed leader of the Labor faction in the House of Lords. In October 2008, Ashton replaced European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson in Brussels. The title of Baroness was granted to her by Queen Elizabeth in 1999 at the instigation of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The issue of the involvement of the newly minted “Minister of Foreign Affairs” of the European Union in Soviet donations was discussed last week at a plenary session of the European Parliament. Then the leader of the British Independence Party, Nigel Farage, asked the question: “Will Baroness Ashton deny that while she was Treasurer of the NRC, she received funds from organizations that were opponents of Western-style democracy?” In his opinion, it is unacceptable that the person entrusted with implementing the external security policy of the European Union was in the past an activist of such an organization. In response, a spokesman for Ms Ashton, who was not present at the meeting, told the European Parliament: “This all happened 25 years ago. She left the NRC in 1983 and has not participated in the organization's work since then. While working for the NRC, she never visited the Soviet Union and never accepted any money from Soviet sources. She first visited Russia when she was a member of the European Trade Commission."
The press service of the NRC (this organization still exists) told Vremya Novostey that this whole story is “an attempt to bring to light the old boring garbage of the 1980s.” “No one has ever presented any evidence of Soviet financing of our organization, because such evidence did not exist in nature. In the early 1980s we opposed the deployment of American cruise missiles on British soil, and the Ministry of Defense tried to discredit us in the eyes of the public.” “When these accusations were first made, NRC Secretary General Bruce Kent offered a £100 prize to anyone who could document the fact of Soviet funding. But the prize remained unclaimed,” the organization said in an official statement.
And yet the scandal surrounding the baroness's past has not yet been resolved. During the baroness's confirmation hearing in January, conservative MEPs may make a new attempt to link her past to the Soviet past. This, in particular, is evidenced by the sharp statement of the right-wing deputy from the Czech Republic Hynek Faimon. The other day he said that “there is no doubt that the Kremlin supported the activities of the NRC. If Ms Ashton, as Treasurer, played any role in this, it is a big scandal.”