Russia would not establish nuclear establishments in Syria, Ivanov

By Atef Moatami, IOL staff

MOSCOW, January 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Emerging from a meeting with visiting Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky, Russian Foreign Minister Igore Ivanov said on Friday, January 17, that Russia would not establish nuclear establishments in Syria.

Ivanov’s statements came in response to the news about a potential Russian-Syrian nuclear cooperation. According to sources with Russia’s ministry of nuclear energy, the establishments are two nuclear plants to generate electricity and desalinate seawater.

Sharansky’s visit to Moscow was not triggered by the alleged Russian-Syrian nuclear cooperation. But the Israeli official, in effect, wants to meet with Mayor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Yakovlev to coordinate the Israeli participation in the upcoming ceremony of marking the 300th anniversary of laying the foundation stone of Russia’s cultural city, the Russian Ru Gazzetta daily newspaper said.

Regardless of the declared "cultural" goal of the visit, Sharansky had met Friday with Ivanov and Head of the Presidential Administration, Alexander Voloshin.

The meeting tackled the “burning issues” on the international arenas and issues of mutual concern, including the problem of double-citizenship held by Russian Jews living in Russia and Israel, and who play a key role in drawing the political landscape in both countries.

In press statements before meeting Ivanov, Sharansky voiced his deep concern over the potential Russian-Syrian nuclear cooperation, claiming that providing Syria with such nuclear technology would inevitably pose a threat not only to the security of the already tense Middle East, but to the entire world as well.

“How can Russia provide Syria with such state-of-the-art technology given that it (Syria) harbors many terrorist leaderships?” Sharansky asked.

Emerging from the meeting, the Israeli official, however, did not dwell on the Russian-Syrian nuclear cooperation in his statements, leaving the podium to Russian Foreign Ministry’s Spokesman Alexander Yakovenko, who, in turn, dismissed as groundless the news about the alleged nuclear cooperation, asserting that no agreements were hammered out between both sides, let alone talks.

The Russian daily described the entire matter as a “joke,” since the news came from the Russian ministry of nuclear energy and was denied by the foreign ministry.

However, it seems as if Russia has actually mulling the possibility of supporting Syria, which is considered to be Russia’s closest Arab ally, especially that President Bashar al-Assad followed the footsteps of his late father, Russia’s strategic ally in the region and given the fact that the Russian-Egyptian relations were at daggers drawn in 1970s.

Staggering under dire economic straits, Russia, which gets whooping financial revenues from its military cooperation with Iran, seeks also to cement its partnership bonds with the Mideastern countries in light of the possible emergence of a new Iraq that would toe the American line not the Russian.

It is not unlikely that disseminating such information will serve as a litmus test to a possible U.S. reaction. But it is not clear what are the motives that lie behind the timing of spreading such information, at a time when Russia’s allies, including

North Korea in the Far East, Iraq and Syria in the Middle East, are indeed in unenviable situation. 

Israel, as a point of fact, appears to be responding to such news on behalf of the United States of America, leading the Russians to reverse their position at least on the public level.