Canada PM faces delicate diplomacy in Russia

Prime Minister Paul Martin lands today in a country many fear is sliding backward from fragile democracy to renewed authoritarianism -- and where there is quiet pressure for leaders such as Mr. Martin to speak out about the trend.
But Mr. Martin may have trouble lecturing President Vladimir Putin after 26-year-old Canadian Rudwan Khalil was reported killed fighting alongside rebels in the breakaway Muslim region of Chechnya last week.
Mr. Putin considers the separatist rebels in Chechnya terrorists. He will likely be eager to make the point that his war against them is part of an international counterterrorism effort.
Russian soldiers exhibited Mr. Khalil's Canadian passport and British Columbia driver's licence on television last week, although they didn't do the same with the three other militants killed in the same battle.
The war on terrorism and Mr. Putin's methods of waging it have been a heated topic in Russia since more than 350 people, many of them children, were killed in a school hostage-taking in the southern town of Beslan last month.
In the wake of that tragedy, Mr. Putin said Russia needed a stronger state and moved to eliminate direct election of Russia's 89 regional governors, saying that they would now be appointed directly from the Kremlin. There is now talk in official circles of also hand-picking mayors, who are currently elected.
In recent weeks, Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, Mr. Putin's two most recent predecessors, have both said they are concerned that democracy in the country is being watered down and the constitution sidelined as Mr. Putin centralizes power.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was U.S. national security adviser under former president Jimmy Carter, went a step further in a recent published commentary. "Mr. Putin's regime in many ways is similar to Mussolini's fascism," he said, citing the Russian President's habit of recalling his nation's historical role as a world power and his efforts to restore Soviet symbols.
Some Russian observers hope Mr. Martin is as worried as they are about the trend. But they warned that overt pressure may not be the best way to influence a Kremlin increasingly irritated with lectures about how to run the country.
"It's up to your Prime Minister," said Alexander Konovalov, head of the Institute for Strategic Assessments, an independent Moscow think-tank. "If what is happening in Russia bothers him, then surely he should speak out.
"I would not try to teach lessons to the President of Russia. But I would express very serious concern. I would simply remind President Putin of his own words: that Russia must become part of the international security system, and that this is only possible in the case that Russia becomes a democratic state and respects its own constitution. I would repeat that last phrase back to him very loudly."
Some argue that unless Mr. Martin loudly denounces what is happening in Russia, his visit may leave the impression that Canada and the West support what he is doing.
"I think the trip is ridiculously timed," said Robert Amsterdam, a Canadian lawyer defending Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed former head of the giant Yukos oil firm, against charges of tax evasion and fraud.
Mr. Khodorkovsky was arrested last year, shortly after he had begun funding opposition parties and speaking out against Mr. Putin. Some believe the billionaire tycoon, who was said to be considering a run at the presidency, was sidelined because he was emerging as a political threat to the President.
Mr. Khodorkovsky's case is before the courts, but defence lawyers say the verdict is already decided and have compared it to Soviet show trials of the 1930s.
"If Martin goes in and says, 'You are destroying what little is left of an independent judiciary,' then it's positive," Mr. Amsterdam said. "But if he says nothing at all, that damages Canada's reputation as a country that cares about human rights."
Canadian officials say democracy was not one of the major talking points proposed for the meeting between Mr. Martin and Mr. Putin, but that it would likely come up privately. The main topics were to be economic ties between the two countries, terrorism and international security.
"Everybody who watches Russian affairs is asking about . . . the clampdown," a senior Canadian government official said.
"Obviously, Russia is a sovereign country, and Putin feels, I'm sure, that right now everybody is hitting at him. But I'd be surprised if the Prime Minister were to go into that environment and not raise the concerns that other leaders have raised."
The good-news part of Mr. Martin's trip was supposed to celebrate progress being made in decommissioning Russia's aging and environmentally dangerous fleet of nuclear submarines, with Canadian help.
However, a visit to the northern port of Severodvinsk, where Canadian aid is helping remove the nuclear cores from three rusting ships, was cancelled so Mr. Martin could attend a ceremony in Halifax yesterday for Lieutenant Chris Saunders, who died last week in a fire aboard the submarine HMCS Chicoutimi.
Canadian officials said the northern trip was cancelled purely for scheduling reasons after Mr. Martin decided to fly to Halifax, not because of the potential awkwardness of touring a submarine yard after the Chicoutimi fire.
After a three-day stay in Moscow, Mr. Martin plans to fly to France for a meeting with President Jacques Chirac and then to Budapest for a summit on "progressive governance."
A multimillion-dollar deal between the Russian energy giant Gazprom and Petro-Canada for light natural-gas terminals in Russia and the United States is expected to be signed while Mr. Martin is in Moscow.

By MARK MacKINNON

(From The Globe and Mail)