U.N. STALLING IRAQ GOV'T PROBE OF $ECRET OIL ACCT.
By NILES LATHEM
March 24, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - U.N. bureaucrats are stonewalling requests from Iraq's new government for records from the scandal-plagued oil-for-food account set up in Saddam Hussein's handpicked French bank, officials said yesterday.
The mysterious activities over the handling of the U.N. account at the French banking giant BNP Paribas, where $100 billion worth of oil-for-food transactions flowed until the war, has emerged as a central focus of several investigations in the wake of the massive bribery-kickback scandal that has rocked the world body at its highest levels.
United Nations custody of the account was so secretive and unusual that even Saddam, who stole $10.1 billion from the program and bribed sympathetic pols with some of the proceeds, pressed unsuccessfully to have the account transferred out of the bank he originally insisted handle the program, said Claude Hankes-Drielsma, the British businessman advising Iraq's Governing Council on the issue.
"The key question in this investigation is, what was the relationship between the U.N. and this French bank?" Hankes-Drielsma added.
Hankes-Drielsma said serious questions arose shortly after the war ended, when files were found in Iraq's Oil Ministry indicating that four earlier audits of the account unearthed "discrepancies" in some of the oil transactions.
Saddam's Central Bank of Iraq was asking questions that the United Nations refused to answer, he said.
After the war, the U.S.-run coalition provisional authority and Iraq's new government began making similar inquiries of the United Nations, not only about the earlier audits, but also about issues like interest payments and whether any funds were transferred to other banks.
A spokesman for the United Nations said records had been turned over the coalition authority, although he was not sure whether the bank statements were included.
A spokesman for BNP Paribas could not be reached for comment, but the company said in a previous statement: "We believe we were appointed by the United Nations for this contract, because they were looking for a large European institution, and we are the largest bank in Continental Europe."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week said he wants an independent investigation to look into allegations of widespread graft within the program.
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WHY SHARON DID IT
By AMIR TAHERI
March 24, 2004 -- 'IN my prayers, I always beg the God Almighty to bless me with the honor of martyrdom." This is how Sheik Ahmed Yassin often expressed his deepest desire.
Despite such pronouncements, the sheik was extra careful not to be caught in a situation in which he would meet martyrdom. Yet the other day the Hamas leader had his wish fulfilled at the hands of an Israeli commando dispatched to eliminate him on the orders of his most determined foe, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
But why would Sharon want the sheik out of the way - and why now?
Yassin's "targeted killing" could be seen as part of Sharon's broader plan to withdraw Israeli forces from Gaza and to dismantle Jewish settlements there.
Sharon does not want his withdrawal from Gaza to look like Ehud Barak's retreat from southern Lebanon, which Hezbollah translated into a great triumph for itself. Sharon wants to leave Gaza from a position of strength. So he needs to dismantle as much of the Hamas infrastructure as he can.
Before leaving, Sharon must find someone to assume control of Gaza. Secret negotiations have been going on with Egypt for months. Egypt, which administered Gaza between 1947 and 1967, had indicated interest in returning in an interim role - on two conditions:
* It should not face radical armed groups that could turn their guns and suicide bombers against Egyptian forces after the Israelis are gone.
* The Western world must provide a package of urgent aid to revive Gaza's economy and provide jobs for at least part of the working population - which, shut out of the Israeli labor market, would be in total despair.
Sharon's hope is to revive the "Gaza first" plan first worked out by Shimon Peres in 1993. The idea is to let Gaza shape its own destiny as best as it can. But Gaza could easily become another southern Lebanon, which means another Damocles' sword hanging above Israel's head.
This is why Sharon wants all Palestinian groups in Gaza disarmed before the enclave is put under the control of Egypt, one of only two Arab states that have signed a peace treaty with Israel.
Sharon also believes that by decapitating Hamas - and in this context one must expect more "targeted killings" - he could bring the current Intifada (uprising) to a quick end. A similar tactic was used when the first Intifada was brought to an end with the elimination of its principal leaders, notably Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), Yasser Arafat's No. 2 and closest associate.
The timing of Yassin's killing may also be linked to two other facts:
* It came just days before the Arab summit at Tunis - where Syria, backed by its client state of Lebanon, plans to promote a new version of the "rejection front" both against Israel and the American initiative for a new Middle East.
* Sharon is scheduled to visit Washington soon to discourage moves to take Hamas off the State Department's list of international terrorist organizations.
BUT possibly the most important reason why Sharon believes he can hit Hamas at the highest level of its leadership is the Israeli belief that the Palestinian radical movement is losing momentum. In 2003, the number of Israelis killed by Hamas and other radical groups such as Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine was down by almost 50 percent compared to 2002. Although this was partly due to more effective prevention work, there has also been a sharp decline in the total number of planned attacks.
Hamas and virtually all other Palestinian radical groups have been experiencing growing difficulties in attracting new recruits, especially for suicide operations. Hamas is also facing financial difficulties.
The fall of Saddam Hussein closed what had become the single biggest source of funds for Hamas in the past five years. Several other Arab countries have been forced to close channels through which funds were collected for and directed to Hamas.
Both the United States and the European Union have also plugged sources of finance for Hamas. (Until 2001 nearly half of all foreign contributions to Hamas came from front organizations in the United States.)
Talks between Hamas and Iran, held in Tehran in February, failed to produce a massive increase in Iranian contributions. Since last November, the cash prize offered to the families of "suicide-martyrs" has been reduced from $25,000 to just over $11,000.
SHARON'S Gaza gamble may look like a daring tactical move. What is needed, however, is a strategy aimed at enabling a new Palestinian leadership to emerge. Caught between "suicide" leaders like Yassin and corrupt despots like Arafat, the Palestinians have no opportunity to put together a moderate and clean political leadership to lead the nation out of the current impasse and onto the path of peace based on the two-states principle.
Most Palestinians know that suicide attacks have never secured freedom and independence for any nation. They also know that the Arafat coterie is unable, if not actually unwilling, to lead the nation at this juncture. Yet the combination of Arafat, with his financial clout, and Yassin, with his suicide squads, has left little space for an alternative leadership to emerge.
And without such a Palestinian leadership, prospects for a durable end to violence shall remain dim.
In the 1980s, Israel helped create Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestine Liberation Organization. In the 1990s, Israel brought Arafat back from his political tomb in order to outflank the moderate Palestinian leadership that had emerged under people like Faisal al-Hussaini and Heidar Abdul-Shafi.
That leadership had made a strategic choice of accepting Israel as a reality, something that neither Yassin nor Arafat were able to make. The result is that the majority of Palestinians are excluded from any meaningful role in shaping their future.
Yassin's demise may provoke a final bouquet of suicide attacks. But once that is over, we shall still be left with the real issue: how to help Palestinians and Israelis to emerge from the impasse of violence and terror.

Amir Taheri will be speaking in New York tomorrow night. For information and registration, go to www.benadorassociates.com.

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ISRAEL'S HIT LIST REVEALED
By URI DAN
March 24, 2004 -- JERUSALEM - A fiery Palestinian hard-liner claimed the leadership of Hamas yesterday and vowed to increase attacks on Israel - even as Israel put him and other members of the terrorist group at the top of its new hit list.
New Hamas chieftain Abdel Aziz Rantisi told tens of thousands of cheering supporters at a Gaza City soccer stadium that he would avenge Monday's slaying of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
"We will fight them everywhere. We will hit them everywhere," Rantisi vowed.
He rejected even the temporary truce that Hamas considered last year when Israel first tried - and failed - to kill him and Yassin.
Rantisi, formerly chief spokesman for the radical Muslim group, told the crowd that he was the designated heir to Yassin and would assume his authority.
But there was no word on whether Rantisi's leadership would be challenged by Khaled Mashal, the Damascus-based radical who had been Hamas' treasurer and leader outside the Palestinian territories.
Israeli officials, meeting for five hours Monday night, agreed to target the entire Hamas leadership.
"Everyone is in our sights," Israeli Internal Security Minister Tsachi Hanegbi told reporters.
Armed Forces Commander Moshe Ya'alon hinted that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and Hezbollah guerrilla chief Sheik Nasrallah may be targets.
Arafat, holed up in his headquarters in Ramallah, responded to the news of Yassin's death by telling aides, "I could be next."
Yassin was killed by three helicopter-launched missiles on Monday, eight days after the latest Hamas bomb attack, which killed 10 Israelis in Ashdod.
The Israeli Cabinet marked him for death after debating last week.
It was disclosed yesterday that secret-service chief Avi Dichter opposed the decision during the Cabinet meeting - but only because he wanted to wait for an opportunity to kill all the band of top Hamas figures in one strike when they were together.
Officials in Jerusalem acknowledged that retaliation from Hamas was virtually certain but that crippling the radical group's leadership was more important.
"There is no doubt that, in the short run, we will have to cope with some outburst of violence . . . but [eliminating Yassin] will turn the situation into a positive one later on," Ya'alon said.
Polls indicated most Israelis agreed.
One survey, reported in the newspaper Maariv yesterday, showed a majority expected some revenge attack - yet 61 percent supported Yassin's killing, while only 21 percent opposed.
In other developments yesterday:
* Israeli jets killed two Hezbollah guerrillas as they prepared to launch rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel.
Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel for more than three hours Monday as a sign of solidarity with Hamas.
* A senior Hamas official said Yassin had once refused a U.S. offer of immunity in return for a halt in terrorist attacks.
The offer was extended only to Hamas' political wing, not to its armed militants, and Yassin rejected it by saying, "The blood of Hamas leaders is no dearer than that of a Palestinian child," Sheik Said Siam told Maariv.
* More than 100 people carrying Palestinian flags marched outside the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan to protest Yassin's killing.
"I'm here to demonstrate as an American that I'm so tired of Israel and their crimes and I'm disgusted in our government," said Rajee Mustafa, a 51-year-old electrical engineer from Jersey City, N.J.

With Post wire services
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FRENCH CONSULTANT TELLS KERRY: BE LESS GAULING
By DEBORAH ORIN
JOHN KERRY
He's "off-code."
March 24, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - A French-born marketing guru has a pointed warning for Democratic wannabe John Kerry: You come off as way too French, mon ami.
"The whole French connection is 'off-code,' " said psychologist Clotaire Rapaille, who helps Fortune 100 companies sell everything from shampoo to the PT Cruiser car by psychoanalyzing cultures. He calls it decoding cultural archetypes.
"The French are thinkers - 'I think, therefore I am.' Americans want somebody that is going to take action . . . All this association [of Kerry] with thinking too much and nuance and five-sentence answers is off-code," he told The Post.
Rapaille's upcoming book, "Archetypes of the Presidency," will analyze politicians' behavior as "on-code" or "off-code" - what meshes or clashes with American culture and what people unconsciously yearn for.
But Rapaille also lunched with Kerry's brother, Cam, to offer advice directly to Team Kerry, said Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter.
For starters, Rapaille, who stresses that he's now a "very proud" U.S. citizen, says Kerry's fancy ski vacation is a big boo-boo and won't help create a macho image.
"We Americans want to know 'What are you going to do tomorrow to change my life?' and if you say right away, 'I'm going on vacation,' it's going off-code," Rapaille said.
"I think [Kerry] has to buy some cowboy boots and get his hands dirty," adds Rapaille.
He sees Bush in marketing terms as a kind of "Marlboro man - the notion that this is the archetypal guy who doesn't think too much, but acts."
In other words, the "cowboy" epithet that Democrats love to hurl at Bush is exactly why he's more on-code (at least for now) than Kerry, says Rapaille.
He also believes that Bush's actions in Iraq were very much on-code - the perfect proof being how angry they made the French - but the follow-through was off-code because America didn't seem ready to deal with the postwar.

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North Korean leader meets China diplomats
By HANS GREIMEL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, right, shakes hands with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing at the State Guesthouse in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, on Wednesday March 24, 2004. Reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il granted a rare meeting Wednesday with China's visiting foreign minister as the communist allies discussed the North Korean nuclear weapons crisis in a visit Beijing has described as a "very important contact." (AP Photo/Xinhua, Ren Li Bo)
SEOUL, South Korea -- Reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il held a rare meeting Wednesday with China's foreign minister as the communist allies discussed the region's nuclear dispute.
Beijing said the session was a "very important contact."
Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, who arrived Tuesday, is the first foreign minister from Beijing to visit the North in five years. The visit is seen as bolstering the push for a third round of six-nation talks on the North's nuclear programs as efforts to organize working level groups hang in limbo.
As Pyongyang's last major ally, China has taken on the role of host and coordinator of the meetings.
The Chinese diplomat and North Korean officials are expected to discuss a date for the crucial working group meetings, which will seek to nail down details before the next full round of six-nation talks, sometime before July, according to South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon.
South Korea has accused the North of dragging its feet on the working groups.
In Hong Kong, a North Korea expert said Pyongyang may skip the next round of nuclear talks because of the uncertainty caused by November's presidential election in the United States.
"What are they going to do there? Now, is anybody going to strike a deal?" said Charles Pritchard, a former U.S. State Department official.
It is unlikely that President Bush will offer a deal before the election, while his Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, likely would start a direct dialogue with Pyongyang if he wins, Pritchard said.
In Pyongyang, Li's delegation toured a street market, laid flowers at a statue of national founder Kim Il Sung and met various North Korean dignitaries in a "warm atmosphere," according to the North Korea's official KCNA news agency.
Li also met Kim Jong Il, who assumed control from his father after Kim Il Sung's death in 1994.
Li presented greetings from Chinese President Hu Jintao, KCNA reported. Before Li departed for Pyongyang, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Kong Quan described the trip as a "very important contact between our two sides."
Earlier in Seoul, South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban said North Korea likely will attend the next six-nation nuclear talks despite its recent rhetoric over U.S.-South Korean military exercises and the impeachment of South Korea's president.
A recent rupture in inter-Korean relations has fanned concern that the communist North might use the joint war games or South's leadership upheaval as grounds for postponing nuclear negotiations.
The U.S. military describes the annual U.S.-South Korean war games, which began earlier this week, as defensive. But North Korea routinely criticizes them as preparation for an invasion.
The United States, two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan have agreed to convene a third round of talks on North Korea's nuclear program by July. A second round ended in Beijing last month without a major breakthrough.
In the meantime, participants are trying to form a "working group" to nail down details. Ban is scheduled to meet Li in Beijing next week.
The United States insists that the North dismantle its nuclear weapons programs completely and verifiably. North Korea says it will only do so if the United States provides economic aid and security guarantees.
North Korea threatened Friday to boost its nuclear arsenal in "quality and quantity," blaming the United States for the lack of progress in nuclear talks.

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>> RUSSIA WATCH...


Russian ship ordered home

The Russian navy's commander finds a nuclear-powered cruiser so poorly maintained that he orders it back to port.
BY MARK MCDONALD
Knight Ridder News Service
MOSCOW - In another blow to Russia's beleaguered military, the navy's commanding admiral ordered a nuclear-powered battle cruiser to return to port Tuesday for fear that ''it could explode at any moment,'' a statement he retracted hours later.
Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov said the Peter the Great, the flagship of the Northern Fleet, had become unseaworthy and dangerous. During a recent inspection he found the cruiser to be poorly maintained, including ``the contents of the [on-board] nuclear reactor.''
But three hours later, he backtracked, saying that the ship's safety is ''in line with existing norms,'' according to The Associated Press. The issue, however, points up problems in the Russian navy, both in hardware and leadership.
The admiral had told the news agency Interfax that the only parts on the boat that passed muster were ``the areas where visiting admirals walk around.''
REPAIRS, TRAINING
His order for all repairs to be finished within three weeks apparently still stands. He also said the crew would have to take another training course before putting out to sea again.
The Peter the Great is worthy of the adjective: It displaces 28,000 tons, stretches the length of three football fields and carries a crew of 610. It reportedly can carry 20 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.
But the ship has had a troubled history. During testing in 1996, an explosion in a steam pipeline killed five sailors. The vessel was commissioned in March 1998 -- 12 years after construction started -- but by that June it was back in port for repairs.
Military analysts in Moscow said Kuroyedov's unexpected docking of the cruiser could be part of a personal feud with the ship's commander, Vladimir Kasatonov. The two officers are said not to like each other, and the admiral blamed Kasatonov personally Tuesday for the shoddy conditions.
The Russian military has been in steep decline since the Soviet Union broke up a dozen years ago.
President Vladimir Putin has made military reform and modernization a priority, although little has improved. Putin's own military chief of staff has called the situation ``beyond critical.''
POOR PAY, MORALE
Army troops remain poorly paid and provisioned, and morale is abysmal. Air Force pilots get only a fraction of the necessary flight training because of a shortage of jet fuel and spare parts. Russian firms are manufacturing sophisticated weapons systems, but the impoverished military can't afford them.
The rust on the navy has been particularly dramatic.
The lone aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuzentsov, is undergoing a four-year overhaul. Most of the ships in the Baltic fleet have been sold off or cut into scrap metal. Last winter, the fleet was so far behind in paying its bills that its electricity was cut off.
Andrei Nikolayev, a retired general and the former head of the Parliament's defense committee, said recently that only 1 in 4 of Russia's surface warships was seaworthy.
Putin was embarrassed last month when he attended the launch of two ballistic missiles from a Northern Fleet submarine. The missiles never got out of their tubes.
Kuroyedov said Tuesday that the expiration date on the missiles had been exceeded by nearly a decade.
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Navy Chief Makes Explosive Remark

By Simon Saradzhyan
Staff Writer

Dmitry Lovetsky / AP

The Pyotr Veliky, the flagship of the Northern Fleet, seen off Severomorsk in 2001.
The commander of the Navy, Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, sent international news agencies scrambling Tuesday morning when he said the Pyotr Veliky, the nuclear-powered flagship of the Northern Fleet, was in such bad shape it could explode "at any moment."
A few hours later, he retracted his statement, which appeared aimed at shifting blame for a series of accidents in the Northern Fleet ahead of a meeting with President Vladimir Putin.
"Everything is in order in those parts of the ship where admirals walk, but as to places where they don't walk, everything is in such a condition that it could blow up into the air. I mean the contents of the nuclear reactor, among other things," Russian news outlets quoted Kuroyedov as saying in the morning.
The 19,000-ton cruiser, which was designed to battle U.S. aircraft carrier groups and was commissioned in 1998, has two nuclear reactors and 10 Granit cruise missiles that could be equipped with nuclear warheads.
Kuroyedov said he personally discovered the "faults" when on board the ship in open sea last Wednesday to witness a ballistic missile launch from a submarine, and he ordered the ship docked for three weeks so the crew could fix the problems.
The Navy chief blamed the ship's commander, Vladimir Kasatonov, and the commander of the Northern Fleet, Gennady Suchkov, for the condition of the Pyotr Veliky, Gazeta.ru reported. Last year, the cruiser was declared the best-maintained and readiest of all the Northern Fleet's vessels.
As international news agencies moved urgent news items with Kuroyedov's statement and reporters bombarded the Navy press service with calls, he retracted his statement, saying the nuclear power unit of the Pyotr Veliky cruiser was safe and that he was unhappy only with "the living quarters and noncombat sections."
When reached by phone Tuesday, a Navy spokesman said the press should focus only on Kuroyedov's afternoon statement, as the one from the morning was "made on the sidelines" and "was not meant for the press." He would not elaborate.
Kuroyedov had made his explosive remarks while taking questions from reporters in a smoking room at the Defense Ministry's downtown headquarters ahead of a meeting of the top brass, attended by Putin, to discuss housing issues, Gazeta.ru reported.
In reality, however, Kuroyedov did not discover any glaring hazards during his inspection of the Pyotr Veliky last week, according to Gazeta.ru, which said it had obtained a list of the problems uncovered during the inspection. These included fire extinguishers that were not checked and poorly equipped crew's quarters. The Navy chief was outraged by overfilled ashtrays, Gazeta.ru said, citing sources in the Northern Fleet. He also was unhappy that paintings were badly hung in the crew's quarters, NTV reported Tuesday evening.
Kuroyedov's alarmist remarks were aimed at discrediting his former deputy, retired Admiral Igor Kasatonov, the uncle of the cruiser's commander, and also Suchkov, according to Gazeta.ru and NTV.
At a recent closed-door hearing on the sinking of the K-159 submarine, Kuroyedov testified that Suchkov was responsible for the accident, which took the lives of nine crew members. Igor Kasatonov testified at the same hearing that Kuroyedov was to blame. The submarine sank in the Barents Sea last August while being towed to a scrap yard.
Now the Navy chief may be trying to settle scores with his former deputy through his nephew and shift the blame for the K-159 sinking onto Suchkov, also a longtime rival, Gazeta.ru speculated.
Calls to the Northern Fleet's press service went unanswered Tuesday afternoon, but the shipyard that built the cruiser was adamant that its nuclear reactors were safe and the ship itself combat-ready.
"The nuclear units are in absolutely fine, safe condition ... and the ship is technically ready for any mission," said Oleg Shulyakovsky, director general of the Baltiisky shipyard in St. Petersburg. He told Interfax that the shipyard's engineers regularly inspect the warship and that the reactors, which were designed in Nizhny Novgorod and built in Khabarovsk, could serve at least for 12 years.
Tuesday's controversy came one month after Kuroyedov was roasted in the press for publicly denying a missile launch failure.
The Northern Fleet's Novomoskovsk nuclear-powered submarine was to launch an RSM-54 ballistic missile during a strategic war game on Feb. 17 attended by Putin. The launch failed.
Later that evening, however, Kuroyedov made a television appearance to assert that no actual launch had been planned. He claimed that only simulations were planned and thus no failure could have occurred, even though the Defense Ministry's Red Star daily had reported that the war game's "official scenario" called for an RSM-54 ballistic missile to be launched from the Novomoskovsk and fly across Russia to the Kamchatka Peninsula.
Under Kuroyedov's command, the Northern Fleet has suffered from a series of accidents, including the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine in 2000, which killed all 118 men on board. Shortly after the Kursk sank, the Northern Fleet command told Russian news agencies that the crew was in no danger and that air was being pumped into the submarine.
Kuroyedov's statements Tuesday were clearly a PR blunder and, given the submarine sinkings and his awkward attempts to hush up the February missile launch failure, he is not likely to be promoted, despite recent speculation in the press, and may be forced to retire, said Ivan Safranchuk, head of the Moscow office of the Center for Defense Information.
Kuroyedov, who has commanded the Navy for five years, reportedly has maintained good relations with Putin and was once tipped to become either defense minister or chief of the General Staff. Now, however, he may have to step down after he turns 60 in September, the mandatory retirement age for senior commanders.
He can ask Putin to extend his active service, but the commander-in-chief may now choose not to do so, Safranchuk said.

? Copyright 2002, The Moscow Times. All Rights Reserved.

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Naval chief 'should shoot himself'
March 24, 2004 Posted: 15:08 Moscow time (11:08 GMT)
MOSCOW - Russia's naval commander, Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, said on Tuesday that the Russian fleet's flagship, the nuclear-powered missile cruiser `Peter the Great', had been sent for repairs because of fears "it could blow up at any moment". Later in the day he officially retracted his remarks made in an informal conversation in a smoking room at the Defense Ministry ahead of a meeting of the top brass, attended by Putin.
However, some suggested Kuroyedov's dramatic remarks were aimed at discrediting his potential rivals, in particular, the cruiser's commander Vladimir Kasatonov, his uncle, retired Admiral Igor Kasatonov, and the Northern Fleet commander Gennady Suchkov. Gazeta.Ru has asked Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for the Analysis of Strategies and Technology, to comment on the situation.

Gazeta.Ru: Ruslan Nikolayevich, what, in your opinion, has prompted the head of the navy, Vladimir Kuroyedov, to make such a harsh statement on the state of the Russian fleet, in particular, of its flagship, `Peter the Great'?

This problem has two aspects. The first one is connected with the situation in the Russian fleet proper. Everyone knows that along with the Soviet Union our fleet has experienced a national catastrophe by losing one of its bases and one-third of its numerical strength. The only aircraft carrier is out of service and can only take part in naval exercises under tow, as was the case during the latest strategic war games in February.
The `Peter the Great' has long had problems with its power generator, which has failed to operate at its full capacity since it was serviced by conscripts.
Those are routine problems, just as the roads in Moscow are not very good despite the all-powerful Luzhkov being the city's mayor. Over the past three to four years measures have been taken to solve those problems as the general situation in the country has been improving, with oil prices soaring and the military budget increasing.
And the fleet has always received the best financing. That is why, let's say, over the past four years, and especially last year, the situation became better than it used to be. It is just that earlier no tests were held, no test launches and so on. But now it has become clear that there are problems with servicing, though they are routine problems.
Besides, there is Admiral Kuroyedov himself, who turns sixty this year, which is retirement age for military servicemen. He can only continue his service if his contract is extended. It may be extended for a year, three years, but it cannot be extended indefinitely. The one to decide on an extension is the president, or, in certain cases, the prime minister.
Kuroyedov did everything he could to have his contract extended for another year, but following the failure [of the test-firing of a ballistic missile] during February's exercises, other candidacies have been proposed. As that became obvious, he began drowning everyone who could possibly replace him
I am not a big fan of the fleet, rather its opponent, and when the chief commander makes a downright moronic statement that the cruiser is about to explode into the air... After all, its nuclear power-plant is not a nuclear bomb. It cannot just explode into the air. It might die quietly, but nothing there can ever blow up.
And when he makes such statements, it means that he is either an incompetent fool, or he is pursuing some definite purpose. Kuroyedov has commanded the fleet that is "about to explode into the air" for the past four years, but for some reason the one who is to blame for the situation now is the ship's commander [Vladimir] Kasatonov. I think Kuroyedov is keeping his rivals down.
The point is that by tradition when the government resigns and the defence minister turns acting defence minister, all the commanders of fleets, troops and departments tender their resignations.
Then those resignations are either accepted or the military personnel are asked to continue their service. So it is quite possible that when Kuroyedov handed in his resignation he knew his prospects were good and it was a mere formality, but then the situation changed and he found himself on a hook.
Apparently, other candidacies have been proposed, though earlier Kuroyedov was believed to be the only candidate for the post. And that is why Kuroyedov arranged a news conference where he blasts everyone. And I regard his "may-explode-at-any-moment" remark as nonsense unworthy of an officer.

And what about Kuroyedov's order to remove the ship's standard?

That's also just another cheap publicity stunt. In that case then, Kuroyedov should have shot himself in the middle of that news conference - remove the flag, comb his hair and blow out his brains.

But were there technical problems on board the `Peter the Great'?

Maintaining the fleet is a very expensive affair, especially when it is projecting its strength, i.e. not merely drifting within 100 km of the coast, guarding the coastline and seeing off foreign fishermen, but setting a course for somewhere to show off the flag, threatening with missiles, doing some shooting. That is all very expensive.

And it is absolutely clear that, until recently, we could not afford that. That is why we should have given up some of the ships to preserve the others. But we tried to preserve everything and everything is now in a deplorable condition. Iron has some margin of safety but even iron wears out.

Kuroyedov took the job at a time when funding had already begun to improve and the fleet was faced with new tasks. It became clear that there were problems. But instead of frankly admitting: yes, we have problems, so we will work towards solving them, he began by lying, saying that no actual launches had been planned, only simulations, though earlier the military made it clear that the president himself would observe those launches. In other words, Kuroyedov seems to be a very weak man and does not suit the position he occupies. GAZETA.RU

Source URL: http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=43079