The World around Us. Любинская Н.А. - 23 стр.

                      Unit 7. Russia’s Need to Belong
Lead in
The arrest of Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky had different comments
in Russia and abroad. The official accusation was avoiding taxes and machina-
tions with “dirty” money. The defence said that taxes had been paid and millions
were donated to charities.
What do you think about Khodorkovsky’s arrest?
What does the word “politicized” mean in this context?

                               Seal of Disapproval
Internal affairs are making Russia less welcome in global clubs
       Russia, unlike Groucho Marx, will join any club that will have it as a
member. Pulling his weight internationally has long mattered to President
Vladimir Putin. He fought in vain to keep the Iraq war under the control of the
UN Security Council, where Russia has a veto. He is pushing to get Russia into
the World Trade Organization. He wants to join the OECD rich-country club.
And by hosting the G8 summit in 2006, he hopes to put the seal on Russia’s
membership of the most elite club of all.
       Responses to the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky of the Yukos oil firm
do not augur well. “The Russian government is not behaving in a manner that
qualifies it to belong in the club of industrialized democracies,” said John
McCain, an Arizona senator. Richard Perle, an eminence grise of American de-
fence, called for Russia to be kicked out the G8. Chris Patten, the European
commissioner for external relations, said the case could slow Russia’s integra-
tion into the European economic area.
       Such comments nay not change much in Moscow. But the American
presidential campaign is aligning groups in Washington that are unhappy with
Mr. Putin. A small but influential crowd dislikes his anti-democratic tendencies
and post-imperial habit of meddling with his neighbours. Human-rights activists
fret over Chechnya; last month’s rigged election for the republic’s president has
drawn more flak. The often heavy-handed treatment of non-Orthodox Christian
minorities upsets the religious wing of the Republican Party.
       All of which means, says an American official, that “for the first time in two-
and-a-half years, there is the potential for Russia policy to become politicized.”
Negotiations over WTO membership, to which all existing members must agree,
“will be more complicated”. And it is “almost inconceivable” that Congress will
repeal the Jackson-Vanik amendment, a Soviet-era restriction on trade.
       The biggest obstacle to WTO membership, though, is the European Un-
ion, which gets 20% of its natural-gas supplies from Russia. There is a stalemate
over the fivefold difference between Russia’s domestic and export prices for
gas. The EU first demanded that Russia abolish the gap, then that it liberalise its
gas market and break up the state monopoly, Russia condemns such demands as
meddling in internal affairs. A recent EU-Russia summit concluded that Russia
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