Yeltsin: `Biggest threat since Cuban missile crisis'  

BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
"Since Khrushchev's Cuban crisis, there hasn't been such a sharp issue in relations between Russia and the United States, which concerns Russia's interests to the degree that everyone should think about it, including Americans and Europeans," declared Russian president Boris Yeltsin on May 8. He was comparing the 1962 "Cuban missile crisis" to Washington's current drive to expand the NATO military alliance eastward.

In October 1962, U.S. president John Kennedy imposed a naval blockade on Cuba and came to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union over Havana's acquisition of missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

"We stated and still state that Russia is against the expansion of NATO," Yeltsin said in a television interview May 14, after announcing a tentative agreement with Washington on the terms of the expansion. U.S. officials conceded virtually nothing in the pact, set to be signed May 27 in Paris.

During negotiations May 13-14 between Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov and NATO secretary general Javier Solana, Moscow demanded that the imperialist military alliance promise not to put nuclear weapons on the territories of new NATO candidates. NATO officials rejected this demand and also refused to guarantee they would not build military bases on the soil of new members, including airfields, communications, and air defense systems.

Despite the Kremlin's objections, U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright insisted, "NATO enlargement will go forward with no delay." She told the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 23, "We do not need Russia to agree to enlargement."

Ultrarightist Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky declared May 8, "We should immediately unite with Belarus, put 100 divisions there, and again aim our missiles at the United States and Brussels. Then nobody would move to the East."

With Washington's military pressure mounting on the Kremlin, Yeltsin approved a new security policy that mandates the right to use nuclear weapons first if attacked. "We are not speaking of making a first strike in order to secure an advantage, but if we are driven into a corner and are left with no other option, we will resort to nuclear weapons," said Boris Berezovsky, deputy head of the Security Council, who announced the policy change in a radio interview May 9.

Berezovsky's remarks echoed Security Council chief Ivan Rybkin, who said in February that the Russian government was reversing a pledge by former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev that the Soviet Union would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a military conflict. Washington has always refused to adopt a formal no-first-use nuclear policy.

The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland are expected to be invited to join the imperialist military alliance at the NATO meeting scheduled for July 8-9 in Madrid. Czech president Vaclav Havel, who says "expanding the alliance was a step forward," is scheduled to meet with Defense Secretary William Cohen May 16 at the Pentagon.

"We will do everything to minimize the consequences for Russia's security of a possible expansion of NATO," Yeltsin told Krasnaya Zvezda, the defense ministry newspaper. The Russian president said Moscow would strengthen relations with neighboring regimes such as Belarus and China.

Moscow moves closer to Tehran
"Russia turns to Oriental states to countervail NATO expansion," said the Russian newspaper Kommersant Daily. "We have good, positive relations with Iran, which shows a tendency to grow," Yeltsin said April 11 during a meeting with Ali Akbar Nateq-Noori, the head of the Iranian Parliament. Nateq-Noori spoke before the Russian Parliament and was interviewed on the television program "Hero of the Day."

Moscow's vow to strengthen ties with the Iranian government is linked to the development of oil fields in Caspian Sea region. The Russian government controls the main export pipelines from the region. While the imperialists have searched for new export routes for Caspian Sea oil, Iran offers the most viable alternative pipeline route - if U.S. sanctions against the country were removed.

Capitalist energy companies including Unocal, Exxon, Amoco, Total SA, and others have signed oil contracts worth more than $15 billion with the government of Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea region. Transporting oil from the Caspian has been a major concern for the imperialists, since a territorial dispute between the regimes in Armenia and Azerbaijan is threatening to flare up into a major armed confrontation.

Moscow has backed the Armenian military, sending 100 T-72 Russian tanks and more than 50 infantry vehicles. An April 14 commentary by Glen Howard in the Wall Street Journal complained, "Despite the magnitude of the economic and strategic stakes, the U.S. has done little to protest Russia's hand in the escalation." The writer demanded Washington stop "this coddling of Moscow" that poses "a serious threat to U.S. interests."

Charles Clover and Robert Corzine of London's Financial Times noted in a May 1 column that "Baku, [Azerbaijan] was one of the birthplaces of the world's oil industry and contributed much to the fortunes of the Rothschild and Nobel families." The properties of these capitalist families were expropriated in the 1920s by the workers and peasants government in Azerbaijan, which came to power on the heels with the victory of the 1917 Russia revolution.

While pressing the NATO expansion toward their goal of overthrowing the workers state in Russia and reestablishing capitalist property relations, the U.S. rulers are also building up their military presence in the Persian Gulf. Washington is pressing the United Arab Emirates regime to buy $6 billion worth of warplanes and the Bahrain government announced it was planning to purchase 20 F-16 fighter jets from U.S.-based companies.

Clinton faces growing scandals
These war moves take place as the Clinton administration is increasingly in hot water. On May 5, liberal New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal wrote that he now disbelieved statements by Clinton and his wife, Hillary. He implied that the president should be impeached for "obstruction of justice," the charge that forced Richard Nixon's resignation in the Watergate scandal in 1974. Such calls have been made before over the last year, but primarily from conservative commentators.

Attorneys for the White House appealed to the Supreme Court May 11 to block investigator Kenneth Starr's demand for their notes relating to the Clintons' involvement in the so- called Whitewater scandal. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ordered the Clinton administration to release the notes, citing as a precedent the 1974 case of the United States v. Nixon in which the Supreme Court rejected Nixon's assertion of executive privilege and ordered Watergate tapes turned over to a special prosecutor.

Starr has stated that Hillary Clinton is a "central figure" in the investigation, which involves Webster Hubbell, her former law partner. Hubbell resigned as Associate Attorney General in 1994 and served an 18-month sentence after pleading guilty to fraud charges linked to the theft of almost $400,000 from the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas. In the eight months between his resignation and entering his plea, Hubbell was paid more than $400,000 by various businesses, many of them with close ties to the administration. Prosecutors suggest this was "hush money." White House press secretary Michael McCurry claimed the criminal charge facing Hubbell "was not fully known to anyone until he pled guilty."  
 
 
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