Kremlin Playing Oil Game For Keeps/Moscow Times--New WMW

Excerpts, links up now at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical
Tomorrow at Buzzflash.com


WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR DECEMBER 29, 2003

1//The Independent, UK--BISHOP ATTACKS BLAIR AS ‘WHITE VIGILANTE’ (…In an interview with The Independent, the Right Rev Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, accuses the religious conservatives who back President Bush of espousing "a very strange distortion of Christianity", and calls for the creation of a UN army to settle international disputes. Dr Wright says: "For Bush and Blair to go into Iraq together was like a bunch of white vigilantes going into Brixton to stop drug dealing. This is not to deny that there's a problem to be sorted, just that they are not credible people to do it.")



2//MENA (Middle East News Agency), Egypt--US COMPANIES RUSH BACK TO LIBYA DESPITE ONGOING SANCTIONS (Libya's recent surprise agreement to abort its programs for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has renewed US commercial interest in the Arab state. Texas-based GlobalNet is likely to be an immediate beneficiary of a US move to liberalize trade ties with the country. Communications service provider Globalnet has been awarded a contract for worldwide termination of voice and data mobile satellite telecommunications traffic originating in Libya. Approval from the US Department of State will be required before service can be initiated, but all of the necessary equipment needed to activate the service has already been put into place at the gateway.)



3//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--US DRAWS A BEAD ON PAKISTAN, SAUDI ARABIA (With the United States facing the prospect of continuing difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan in the new year, there are signs that it will adopt an aggressive policy to cut all kinds of supply lines to the guerrilla movements in these countries, starting with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and making no concessions.)

4//The News International, Pakistan--INDIA POSSESSES 50 TO 100 NUCLEAR DEVICES (India has between 50 to 100 nuclear devices and can deliver its nuclear weapons against targets in Pakistan by French Mirages and Soviet SU-30 fighter-bombers, and indigenous Agni medium-range missiles…The Bush administration has not pressed on this front except to urge stricter Indian controls over the exports of materials and technology that could be used for WMD. On the CTBT both Pakistan and India appear to be on the same page given by the Bush administration’s opposition to the treaty. Both continue to maintain respective moratoria on testing, but US decisions on developing new types of nuclear weapons like bunker busters could have an impact on Indian thinking, the findings say.)


5//The Moscow Times, Russia--KREMLIN PLAYING OIL GAME FOR KEEPS (Indeed, through the legal onslaught against Yukos, in particular the jailing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man and its most influential pro-American voice, President Vladimir Putin has clearly defined the new rules of the game. In doing so, Putin is not only increasing the power of the state domestically, he is also repositioning the state geopolitically… Although the official Washington line is that America is worried about what Khodorkovsky's arrest means for democracy in Russia, the question of what it means for oil prices and supplies is not far behind. U.S. President George W. Bush called Putin twice this month to raise concerns about where Russia is headed, according to a senior State Department official.)

... I have been following this somewhat closely since the beginning of October of 2003. Poppy Bush was in Moscow meeting with Khodorkovsky to cut a between Yukos and ExxonMobil/Carlyle Group. Shortly after that, it was announced that Schroeder and Putin were meeting over the weekend in the Urals, followed by another announcment that Russia was planning to switch to the Euro for oil trade, being that the majority of Russian oil is piped to Europe. Right after that, Poppy resigns from Carlyle Group. And it has been mentioned that ExxonMobil was going to pump Yukos/Russian oil to Israel via pipelines through Iraq. Putin cut that off. Everyone knows that Israel covets the oil fields of the Gulf States, and only needs a steady supply (a huge one) to complete their goal of taking over Saudi, Iraq and other oil producing states in the Middle East.

So there is more to it than just Putin "laying down the law", and reminding people who the boss is.

and this is only Part 1 of the story....I don't know when Part 2 is running.....

Bush has called Putin twice over all this...he's very nervous