Russia rethinks its longtime support for Iraq

Whenever Washington set its sights on Baghdad, Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein knew he could count on Moscow for support.

Before American bombs began to drop in the 1991 Gulf War, for example, then-Soviet Foreign Minister Yevgeni Primakov met Mr. Hussein at his presidential palace. Then months later, with the heaviest air campaign in American history under way, Mr. Primakov made a risky run for Baghdad - his convoy smeared with mud, and headlights off - to help Hussein find a face-saving way out.

But now, despite Russia's continuing support for Iraq - Russia routinely backs Iraq in the UN Security Council, and mediated in the 1997 and 1998 US-Iraq crises - the Kremlin's view is changing.

As Vice President Dick Cheney embarked on a tough-sell Mideast tour yesterday, to build support for Washington's expansion of its "war on terrorism" to include toppling Iraq's Hussein, analysts say the Kremlin is adjusting its priorities and maximizing its opportunities to collect billions in debt and oil deals.

That result says as much about evolving US-Russia relations - and Mr. Putin's not-always-popular, pro-West strategy - as it does about Moscow souring on Baghdad. "Russia's first objective is not to allow this military action in Iraq - whatever it might be - to jeopardize the level of US-Russia relations that has been achieved," says Oksana Antonenko, a Russia specialist at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London.

"Russia is quite fed up with [Hussein] anyway," Ms. Antonenko says. "The judgment in the Kremlin is that if the US commits very strongly to action against Iraq, Russia would work within the broader coalition."

Moscow's key demands will be to ensure that up to $20 billion in debt arrears, current oil deals, and other contracts are respected; that Russia's interests are respected by any post-Hussein regime; and that any action is given at least a fig leaf of international legitimacy by the UN.

Branded by President Bush as part of an "axis of evil" that is bent on creating weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has been the subject of the tightest sanctions in modern history for more than a decade. It kicked out UN weapons inspectors in 1998 and refuses to let them return.

Before Sept. 11, the launch of the global US military campaign, and a subsequent blossoming of US-Russia ties, Moscow opposed Washington's effort to tighten Iraqi sanctions so they would have a greater impact on the regime than on civilians.

But Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov - arriving in Washington for a three-day visit on Monday - made clear that "Baghdad must accept weapons inspectors under the UN aegis, to stop the concern of the world community."

"Sept. 11 really did mark a Rubicon in Putin's strategy," says Strobe Talbott, former deputy secretary of state and head of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization in New Haven, Conn.

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