TODAY: Qadafi comes to Moscow; Medvedev plays peacekeeper with Armenai and Azerbaijan; Lithuania says Russia broke its ceasefire in Georgia; the Georgian parliament approves a new government; and seven policemen are injured by a radio-controlled bomb.
Moammar Qadafi visited Moscow on Saturday, ostensibly to discuss improving business and industrial ties between the countries. "Unfortunately, in the past our relations have been mostly focused on military cooperation and politics," Kadafi said. "Now, the Russian companies have already begun to work in various sectors of the Libyan economy. We consider especially important our cooperation in oil and gas." Could he be leveraging growing U.S.-Moscow antipathy for economic gains in Libya? And what's it like in his portable digs, a Bedouin tent?
The following day, President Medvedev welcomed Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to Meiendorf Castle, where he practiced his own brand of reconciliation, opening talks on the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. "The presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed to continue work ... on agreeing a political resolution of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh," reads a copy of a declaration signed by all three presidents. The talks come on the eve of Medvedev's first state of the union speech this week, in which he is expected to address the world financial crisis and the situation in Georgia. "This document will include in it answers to a host of the most significant questions which stand before the country," Medvedev said on a Kremlin video blog. "I mean of course the situation with which the Russian Federation was confronted in August...I mean the Caucasus crisis. We cannot ignore its consequences, consequences not only for our country but also for the whole global world order."
Speaking of Georgia, Lithuania's President Valdas Adamku says Russia has "humiliated" the EU by not completely honoring a ceasefire there, while other critics blame the EU and its transparent energy fixation for derailing a hard line response to Russia's role in the Georgia crisis. In Georgia, Meanwhile, the parliament approved a new government, and in Belarus on Sunday hundreds of people rallied to remember its Stalinist purges. In Rostov-on-Don, seven policemen were injured by a homemade, radio-controlled bomb.
On the economic front, the Russian state's bailout bonanza might forestall its billionaires from shirking their heavily leveraged investments (this year, anyhow), but it also could portend a Capitalist crisis marked by "the wholesale reconsideration of the capitalist model and free market economic orthodoxy."
Photo: (L-R) Presidential advisor Arkady Dvorkovich, First Deputy Chief of Staff Vladislav Surkov, Kremlin Chief of Staff Sergei Naryshkin, Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev and presidential advisor Dzhakhan Pollyeva prepare the state of the nation address at Gorki residence outside Moscow, November 2, 2008. REUTERS/RIA Novosti/Kremlin/Dmitry Astakhov (RUSSIA)
