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Mauno Koivisto sees no end to Chechen crisis
- Former Finnish President Mauno Koivisto said on Monday that he sees no end
to the crisis in Chechnya. President Koivisto was speaking at the opening
of a public lecture series, called "Along the Road to St. Petersburg", at
the University of Helsinki.
- Koivisto, who served two terms as President from 1982 to 1994, sees a
number of reasons for the war in Chechnya. Among other things, it is a war
for oil. It is also a punitive war, aimed at showing other Islamic peoples
of the Northern Caucasus that trying to secede from Russia is not a good
idea.
- “A Russian general who lived in the 19th century said that they cannot be
conquered: they must be destroyed. At the same time he said that a
political solution must be reached with the Chechens. I am waiting with
anticipation what kind of a solution will come”, said Koivisto with a hint
of irony.
- The former president disagreed sharply with former IMF leader Michel
Camdessus who said that the terms of loans to Russia should be changed “if
Russia does not behave well in Chechnya”. According to Koivisto, the IMF
should be an apolitical organization, and the terms of its loans
should not be changed for political reasons.
- Chechnya came up after the main lecture, when the capacity audience was
allowed to ask questions. The topic of Koivisto's address was "Finland, the
EU and Russia". Koivisto limited his pondering to Russia's development in
the 1990s, its economy, and its indebtedness.
- The president had asked the unit of transitional economies of the Bank of
Finland for an assessment of the size of Russia's debt, which proved to be
surprisingly small.
- According to the figures received by Koivisto, Russia's net foreign debt
was about USD 153 billion. By deducting outstanding loans of the Soviet
Union, which are not likely ever to be repaid, the debt goes down to USD 20
billion.
- “If all of the currency that has fled the country, and the dollars in the
hands of the citizens were calculated according to the highest estimates,
and were brought into the economy, the debt would turn into an asset of 180
million dollars”, the president estimated.
- Koivisto thoroughly pondered the historical reasons for Russia's current
development, comparing the current situation with the “smuta” of the early
17th century - a period of 15 years during which Russia had no ruler at all.
Koivisto said that Russia has undergone a period of disunity almost as
long, with certain similarities to smuta, although the two cannot be
compared directly.
- Koivisto was quite amused by Russia's first steps in the early 1990s when
the Soviet Union had broken up and the country wanted to shake off the
"superfluous" Soviet republics. According to Mauno Koivisto, the leaders in
Moscow had the idea that the distant areas were feeding off the central government.
- “Russia even started asking Finland to recognize their independence. How
could this country, which was much older than Finland, ask something like
this? Then they changed their minds and declared themselves the heirs to
the Soviet Union”, Koivisto said.
- He criticized Russia's leaders of the early '90s for squandering the
country's natural resources. Russia's government took short term loans,
giving the crown jewels - Russia's natural resources - as collateral.
“Naturally, the debts could not be serviced, and the oligarchs got their
hands on many riches for a low price.”
- According to Koivisto, the United States was not interested in what
happened to Russia's riches. The main concern was that the country's means
of production and wealth be distributed one way or another, so that a
strong centralized leadership could not be established again.
- Although a large part of Russian property is now in the hands of the
oligarchs, Koivisto feels that they have a bleak future ahead of them.
Quoting former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, he said "It is unlikely that
they (the oligarchs) will play an important role in (Acting President
Vladimir) Putin's government. Ownership has always been tenuous in Russia."
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 14.3.2000
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