၃၁-၁-၀၉
အိုင္ယာလန္ႏိုင္ငံ၊ ဒပ္ဘလင္ျမိဳ႕ေတာ္အနီး၊ မာလာဟိုက္တြင္ က်င္းပျပီးစီးခဲ့သည္ စတုတၴၳအၾကိမ္ေျမာက္ ျပည္သူ႕လႊတ္ေတာ္ကိုယ္စားလွယ္မ်ားအဖြဲ႕(MPU) ညီလာခံတြင္ အၾကိတ္အနယ္ ေဆြးေႏြး-ျငင္ခံုမႈမ်ား ရွိခဲ့သည္ မွန္ေသာ္လည္း ကိုယ္စားလွယ္မ်ားအားလံုးက လူၾကီးလူေကာင္းဆန္စြာ ျပဳမူ-ဆက္ဆံ-ေျပာဆိုခဲ့ၾကပါသည္။ စစ္အစိုးရ၏ ကုလသမဂၢၢေနရာစိန္ေခၚေရး (Credential Challenge) ကိစၥ လုပ္သင့္-မသင့္ကုိ မဲခြဲဆုံးျဖတ္ျပီးမွသာလ်င္ အစီအစဥ္အရ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ကို ေရြးခ်ယ္ခဲ့ျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ (Credential Challenge) ကိစၥအတြက္ မဲခြဲစဥ္သည့္အခ်ိန္တြင္ မည္သူသည္ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္ျဖစ္လာမည္ကို မည္သူမွ် ၾကိဳတင္ခန္႕မွန္းႏိုင္ျခင္းမရွိခဲ့သည္မွ အမွန္ပင္ျဖစ္သည္။
ထို႕ေနာက္ လွ်ဳိ႕၀ွက္မဲျဖင့္ ေရြးခံရသည့္၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္မွ ၀န္ၾကီးအဖြဲ႕စာရင္းကို လ်ာထားခဲ့ျခင္းသာျဖစ္ျခင္းေၾကာင့္ (Credential Challenge) ကိစၥအတြက္ ၀န္ၾကီးေနရာေပး၍ မဲ၀ယ္-မဲဆြယ္မႈျဖစ္စရာအေၾကာင္းလံုး၀မရွိပါ။ ၀န္ၾကီးခ်ဳပ္မွ တင္သြင္းသည့္ ၀န္ၾကီးမ်ားအားလည္း လွ်ဳိ႕၀ွက္မဲျဖင့္သာ လံုးလံုးလ်ားလ်ားအမ်ားစုဆႏၵၵမဲ (Absolute majority) ျဖင့္ ညီလာခံမွ အတည္ျပဳသည္ျဖစ္ျခင္းေၾကာင့္ ဒီမိုကေရစီက်င့္စဥ္အတိုင္း အျပည့္အ၀ ရြက္ေဆာင္ျခင္းျဖစ္ပါသည္။ ဒီမိုကေရစီနည္းက် ေရြးခ်ယ္ျပီးသည့္ ၀န္ၾကီးအဖြဲ႕သည္ အလွည့္က်သဘာပတိ ေဒၚစန္းစန္း၏ေရွ႕ေမွာက္တြင္ပင္ ကတိသစၥၥာ ဆိုခဲ့ၾကသည္လည္းျဖစ္ပါသည္။
ေဒါက္တာတင့္ေဆြ
ျပန္ၾကားေရး၀န္ၾကီး
ျပည္ေထာင္စုျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အမ်ိဳးသားညြန္႕ေပါင္းအစိုးရ
ျဖည့္စြက္ခ်က္။
ဝန္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္အျဖစ္ ေရြးခ်ယ္တင္ေျမႇာက္ျခင္းခံရသည့္ ေဒါက္တာစိန္ဝင္းသည္ မဲ (၂၂)မဲရရွိၿပီး Credential challenge လုပ္လိုသည့္ဘက္မွ ဝန္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ေလာင္း ဦးသိန္းဦးသည္ (၁၀)မဲ ရရွိခဲ့ရာ၊ ကြာျခားသည္မွာ (၁၂)မဲျဖစ္၍ ဝန္ႀကီးေနရာေပးၿပီး မဲဝယ္သည္ဆိုသည့္ စြပ္စြဲခ်က္မွာ လံုးဝ အေျခအျမစ္ကင္းမဲ့ပါသည္။
Sunday, February 1, 2009
New Parallel Government
UN special envoy to meet Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar
http://www.newkerala.com/topstory-fullnews-84089.html
Yangon, Jan 30 : The United Nations special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, is scheduled to meet opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on an official visit expected to start this weekend, government sources said Friday.
Gambari is expected to arrive in Yangon Saturday to revive his so far unsuccessful efforts to push Myanmar's ruling junta to free Suu Kyi and thousands of other political prisoners and to allow democratic reforms in the military dictatorship.
On his last trip in August 2008, Gambari was denied an audience with military supremo Senior General Than Shwe. The UN special envoy also failed to meet Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest in her Yangon home since May 2003.
Suu Kyi reportedly judged a meeting then with Gambari as unnecessary as he had failed to meet Than Shwe, the prime decision-maker in Myanmar.
It was unclear whether Gambari will be granted an interview with Than Shwe this trip, but government sources said the special envoy was scheduled to meet Suu Kyi, members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) opposition party and some government ministers based in Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon.
Gambari was also scheduled to visit parts of the Irrawaddy Delta, which was devastated by cyclone Nargis in May last year.
The cyclone left 140,000 dead or missing, and 2.4 million in dire need of emergency assistance, the delivery of which was initially hampered by the military, but finally allowed in.
--- IANS
UN envoy to hold talks in Myanmar with all parties (Roundup)
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1456765.php/UN_envoy_to_hold_talks_in_Myanmar_with_all_parties__Roundup__
Asia-Pacific News
Jan 30, 2009, 16:56 GMT
New York/Yangon - The United Nations special envoy for Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, was to begin on Saturday a four-day visit to the country for talks on ongoing issues, the UN said Friday in New York.
Gambari was expected in Yangon on Saturday to revive his unsuccessful efforts to push Myanmar's ruling junta to free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and thousands of other political prisoners and to allow democratic reforms in the military dictatorship.
The UN had been urging the military regime to free all political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, and launch democratic reform of its institutions.
Government sources in Yangon said Gambari's schedule would include a meeting with Suu Kyi, leader of the main opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), who has been under house arrest for more than 10 years.
'Mr Gambari looks forward to holding meaningful discussion with all parties on all the points he raised during his last visit,' said UN spokeswoman Marie Okabe.
Gambari received an invitation by the Myanmar government to pay another visit and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has asked him 'to continue his consultations with the government and other relevant parties in the implementation of the good offices' mandate entrusted to the secretary general by the UN General Assembly,' Okabe said.
On his last trip in August 2008, Gambari was denied an audience with military supremo Senior General Than Shwe. The UN special envoy also failed to meet with Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest in her Yangon home since May 2003.
Suu Kyi reportedly judged a meeting then with Gambari as unnecessary as he had failed to meet with Than Shwe, the prime decision-maker in Myanmar.
It was unclear whether Gambari would be granted an interview with Than Shwe this trip, but government sources said the special envoy was scheduled to meet with Suu Kyi, NLD members and some government ministers based in Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon. Gambari was also scheduled to visit parts of the Irrawaddy Delta, which was devastated by cyclone Nargis in May last year.
The cyclone left 140,000 dead or missing, and 2.4 million in dire need of emergency assistance, the delivery of which was initially hampered by the military, but finally allowed in.
Watch out for Bangladesh and Thailand: Military commander
http://democracyforburma.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/watch-out-for-bangladesh-and-thailand-military-commander/
January 30, 2009 · No Comments
by Mungpi
Friday, 30 January 2009 21:07
New Delhi (Mizzima) – Burma’s military generals in a secret meeting warned commanders and officers to beware of Bangladesh in the wake of a maritime dispute between the two countries in November.
Maj-Gen Soe Win, commander of the Northern Military Command, during a meeting held recently said that Burma considers Bangladesh a hostile neighbour, and warned commanders and officers to keep an eye on Bangladesh’s military movements.
The minutes of the meeting held in Naypyitaw, a copy of which is in Mizzima’s possession, said while Burma was exploring for gas in its territorial waters and in its economic zone, Bangladesh had strongly opposed the activity that led Burma to withdraw.
“In other words,” Soe Win said, “Bangladesh is provoking us.” Soe Win also accused the United States, which has imposed financial sanctions on the generals, of backing and inciting Bangladesh to oppose the exploration.
Besides, Soe Win, voicing the general’s paranoia, said the army has received information of movements of US Navy fleets using Thai and Bangladesh waters as a base.
“Therefore, all must understand that there is a likelihood of foreign invasion and we must carefully observe military movements,” Soe Win added.
During the meeting, attended by several field officers and commanders, Soe Win reminded them of the need to maintain vigilance along the border areas as a preparation for any possible intrusion from foreign countries.
Though there seems to be no other verification for Soe Win’s fears, the Generals, however, are reportedly intensifying military presence in Arakan state, which borders Bangladesh.
According to a Bangladesh-Burma border based Burmese journalist, the junta is stepping up its military presence, particularly the artillery battalion in the border township of Maungdaw in Burma’s western Arakan state.
“The junta is shifting several of its battalions to a new military base in Maungdaw. Particularly the artillery battalion,” the journalist, who requested not to be named, told Mizzima.
The journalist, citing local sources in the area said the Burmese Army is being stationed in a long stretch of valley behind the cover of mountains to conceal their presence.
“It looks to me that the army is preparing for an impending war or some kind of conflict. But we don’t know against whom,” he added.
Similarly, an Editor of the Dhaka based Burmese News Agency Narinjara told Mizzima that in recent months, at least 13 battalions of the Burmese Army have moved up to northern Arakan state in Maungdaw Township.
“We also can confirmed that the army is building an airbase in Maungdaw Township,” Narinjara’s editor Khaing Mrat Kyaw said.
He added that Burma’s military leaders including Vice Snr. Gen. Maung Aye, the junta’s second strongman, and Prime Minister Thein Sein have paid visits to Arakan state in recent weeks to check on the progress.
“Obviously it is some kind of preparation. And I think the junta wants to make a come back in the Bay of Bengal to continue the gas exploration,” Khaing Mrat Kyaw said.
“They seem to be really sore with Bangladesh over the last dispute,” Khaing Mrat Kyaw remarked.
In early November, Bangladesh and Burma had a face off, when Bangladesh objected to the exploration work of a South Korean company Daewoo, which was accompanied by Burmese naval vessels in the Bay of Bengal.
Bangladesh said the block in which the Burmese vessel and Daewoo were test drilling comes under its maritime boundary and immediately sent two Navy vessels to the spot.
Burmese generals, though saying that the area belongs to the Burmese economic zone, later moved out of the area.
During the stand off Bangladesh deployed two naval vessels in the Bay of Bengal and reinforced its border security, but Burma was unable to bring in timely reinforcements, Khaing Mrat Kyaw said.
“I think that’s why they are now building their bases and even constructing roads and railways, so that they can move their army anytime quickly,” Khaing Mrat Kyaw observed.
http://www.mizzima.com/
UK Government said Burma’s 2010 Election Will Entrench Military Rule
http://burmadigest.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/uk-government-said-burma%E2%80%99s-2010-election-will-entrench-military-rule/
Burma DigestJanuary 30, 2009
Posted by burmadigest under News
- Report courtesy of Burma Campaign UK
British Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell MP has strongly criticised the Burmese military regime’s elections planned for 2010, saying that they are “designed to entrench military rule behind a facade of civilian government.”
Bill Rammell’s written statement came in response to a Parliamentary Question by Jim Cunningham MP on 12th January 2009, and was published in Hansard. The Minister also stated that; “We will continue to give our full support to the UN Secretary General and his efforts to break the current deadlock.”
The United Nations had been trying to broker tri-partite dialogue between Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, ethnic groups, and the regime. The regime has defied the UN Security Council and General Assembly, and instead pushed ahead with its so-called road-map to democracy. Among the many undemocratic measures in the new constitution, the military have an effective veto over decisions made by the new Parliament and government.
Full statement from the Minister:
Mr. Jim Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent assessment the Government have made of the political situation in Myanmar.
Bill Rammell: The military regime in Burma is determined to maintain its hold on power regardless of the cost and suffering of its people. The junta’s ‘Roadmap to disciplined democracy’, including a new constitution and elections planned for 2010, is designed to entrench military rule behind a facade of civilian government. The process excludes the opposition and meaningful participation by the ethnic groups. Fundamental rights are consistently ignored. Since early November, over 200 pro-democracy activists have been given sentences of up to 65 years in prison. These severe sentences are clearly designed to silence all dissent ahead of the 2010 elections. There are now over 2,200 political prisoners in detention, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and other pro-democracy leaders. Ethnic minority groups have been methodically marginalised.
Against this backdrop, we will continue to do all we can to generate international pressure for a peaceful transition to democracy and respect for human rights in Burma. In particular, we will continue to give our full support to the UN Secretary General and his efforts to break the current deadlock.
A UN envoy returns to Burma
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/30/opinion/edburma.php
The Boston GlobePublished: January 30, 2009
The UN special envoy for Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, is making his seventh visit to that country, which has become a virtual prison camp under its military junta.
Gambari's UN mandate is to gain the release of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, and other political prisoners, and to persuade the country's ruling junta to include her National League for Democracy in an effort toward political reconciliation.
On his previous trips, Gambari failed to move the regime toward dialogue with the league, an opposition party that won over 80 percent of parliamentary seats in Burma's last free election in 1990 - a result the junta refused to honor.
Worse yet, during his last visit, five months ago, Gambari foolishly asked the league to participate in the sham election that dictator General Than Shwe wants to stage in 2010. Under a rigged 2008 constitution, Suu Kyi would be prohibited from even voting, and 25 percent of Parliament seats would go to the military.
Gambari will be visiting the country, which is also known as Myanmar, in the aftermath of a crackdown on dissidents in which government courts handed down harsh prison sentences to scores of pro-democracy activists. On this trip, he should stick to his orders, demanding Suu Kyi's freedom and dialogue with her party. And if he is granted permission to meet with her, he should insist that she be allowed to confer first with party leaders who are not in prison.
Today in Opinion
Arms control treaties: The rules of the gameA UN envoy returns to BurmaA good start in reviving the economyIn June, on the occasion of Aung San Suu Kyi's 63d birthday, Barack Obama saluted her, saying: "She has sacrificed family and ultimately her freedom to remain true to her people and the cause of liberty. And she has done so using the tools of nonviolent resistance in the great tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King."
Obama would be acting within that tradition if he aligned America with Burma's democrats and pressed Gambari not to deviate from his democratizing mission.
Raids in Rangoon Yield More Heroin
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By THE IRRAWADDY Friday, January 30, 2009
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Police and customs officers in Rangoon have confirmed that a special anti-narcotics task force has seized substantial quantities of heroin in a series of raids carried out in the former Burmese capital since late last week.
Police said at least 28 kilograms of heroin were found last Sunday in a container on the Singaporean-flagged ship Kota Tegap, which was docked at the Asia World Port Terminal, located in Rangoon’s Ahlone Township.
Burma's Home Minister Maj-Gen Maung Oo, second from right, together with Rangoon-based diplomats check the illicit drugs before being put into flames, during the drug burning ceremony held at a remote town Lashio in Burma's northeastern Shan state in June, 2007. (Photo: AFP)
The port is owned by Tun Myint Naing, the son of former drug kingpin and militia leader Lo Hsing Han and one of those listed for sanctions by the US Treasury Department.
According to a report by Washington-based Radio Free Asia, the container, which was bound for Singapore, is owned by the Myanmar Timber Enterprise, a government-owned business that is also under US sanctions.
Police told The Irrawaddy on Friday that in a subsequent sting operation, the Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control (CCDAC) discovered another large cache of heroin in FMI City, an upscale residential area in Hlaing Tharyar Township. Further details were not available.
The CCDAC is a high-level task force chaired by Minister for Home Affairs Maj-Gen Maung Oo. Brig-Gen Khin Yi, the director general of the national police force, serves as secretary of the committee, which is based in the junta’s capital of Naypyidaw.
According to sources at the customs department, the police special intelligence department, known as the Special Branch, is now questioning port employees, high-ranking government officials and prominent businessmen in connection with the heroin seizure at the Asia World Port Terminal last weekend.
Observers say that drug traffickers are increasingly using maritime routes to smuggle drugs out of Burma due to a tough suppression campaign by neighboring countries such as Thailand and China.
On Tuesday, the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma reported that Kyaw Kyaw Min, a crab exporter in Bogalay Township, Irrawaddy Division, was arrested for attempting to smuggle 32 kilograms of heroin out of the country aboard a container ship.
Meanwhile, Singapore’s Central Narcotics Bureau seized 44.2 kilograms of heroin last year, up from 17.2 kilograms seized in 2007, the Straits Times reported Friday.
A shipment of 11 kilograms of high-grade heroin, bound for the European market, was seized in June, said the report, adding that it was the biggest seizure of its kind in the last 10 years. The report added that most of the heroin came from Thailand and Burma.
According to the 2008 World Drug Report, opium poppy cultivation in Southeast Asia increased by 22 percent last year, mainly driven by a 29 percent increase in opium cultivation in Burma.
The Burmese regime seized 103.8 kilograms of heroin and 1,690 kilograms of opium from January 2007 to June 2008, according to official figures.
Junta commander: 2010 elections could be postponed
by admin — last modified 2009-01-29 14:59
A junta commander in southern Shan State said the planned 2010 elections could be postponed due to several reasons, while meeting with people from several civil services early in the month, according to reliable sources.
By Hseng Khio Fah
29 January 2009
On 2 January, Kunhing Area Commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Tin Maung Shwe held a civil service meeting with people from immigration, police department, educational department, health department and traffic police.
“Elections could be delayed due to four reasons,” an official who wishes to remain anonymous quoted the commander as saying.
Disruptive activities by dissidents both inside and outside the country
Tension with Bangladesh over gas exploration
Incomplete census
Problems in the drug eradication program
“The generals want the new American administration to remove Burma out of its decertification list,” commented one source.
Burma has since 1988 been in the US blacklist.
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www.shanland. org
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Suu Kyi, Gambari Likely to Meet: NLD-IRRAWADDY
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=15029
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By WAI MOE Thursday, January 29, 2009
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Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will probably meet with United Nations Special Envoy to Burma Ibrahim Gambari during his forthcoming visit to Burma, her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), said on Thursday.
NLD spokesperson Win Naing told The Irrawaddy that the NLD expected its leader to meet with Gambari, and it hoped the Nigerian diplomat would discuss meaningful issues and perhaps achieve a tangible breakthrough of some type during his visit.
Detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi (L) meets UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari (R) in March 2008. (Photo: AFP)
“UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the UN envoy won’t visit unless there is a sign of progress in Burma,” he said. “And then the UN announced Mr Gambari’s trip—it seems there is something in hand for the envoy. In this situation, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi could meet Mr Gambari.”
The UN said on Monday that Gambari would visit Burma at the end of this month.
“What I can tell you about the reports you have been seeing is that I can confirm that the secretary-general has asked Mr. Gambari to return soon, and that the Myanmar [Burmese] Government has extended an invitation for him to visit the country,” UN spokesperson Marie Okabe said. “At this point, however, discussions are ongoing about the details of the visit.”
The visit will be the seventh trip to Burma for the special envoy since 2006. During his last visit, in August, he failed to meet with the Burmese junta leader, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, and Suu Kyi. He held two meetings with NLD leaders.
According to diplomatic sources, the first meeting between Gambari and the NLD was about 30 minutes. Gambari reportedly urged the NLD to join the 2010 elections. Gambari was criticized by the NLD for stepping out of a purely mediation role.
Win Naing said that during the second meeting, the NLD did not talk with Gambari about the 2010 election issue, but party leaders discussed four issues which were needed for Burma’s national reconciliation process.
The four issues were: release of political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi; holding a meaningful dialogue between the military regime and opposition groups; forming an economic development committee; and opening a liaison office in Burma for the UN secretary-general, Win Naing said.
Win Naing said the NLD was not optimistic about Gambari’s seventh trip.
“After the last six visits to Burma by the special envoy, we did not see any concrete results for political development in the country,” he said. “But we hope there may be a solution to start a genuine dialogue on this trip.”
In regard to Suu Kyi, Win Naing said her lawyer, Kyi Win, was denied permission to visit her by authorities, and a second lawyer, Hla Myo Myint, was recently harassed by authorities.
The NLD won a landslide victory in the 1990 elections, winning more than 80 percent of the constituencies. The military regime failed to honor the election results.
Putin's Grasp of Energy Drives Russian Agenda
By ANDREW E. KRAMER
Published: January 28, 2009
MOSCOW — The titans of Russia’s energy industry gathered around an enormous map showing the route of a proposed new pipeline in Siberia. It would cost billions and had been years in the planning. After listening to their presentation, President Vladimir V. Putin frowned, got up from his chair, whipped out a felt pen and redrew the map right in front of the embarrassed executives, who quickly agreed that he was right.
Vladimir Rodinov/Presidential Press Service, via Associated Press
Vladimir V. Putin, then the president of Russia, in 2006 ordering energy executives to reroute a proposed pipeline in Siberia.
Mikhail Metzel/Associated Press
Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin and Alexei Miller, the chief executive of Gazprom, in a control room in Moscow this month.
The performance, which was carried on state television in 2006, was obviously stage managed, but there was nothing artificial about its point. It was a typical performance for a leader who has shown an uncanny mastery of the economics, politics and even technical details of the energy business that goes well beyond a politician taking an interest in an important national industry.
“I would describe it as very much his personal project,” said Clifford G. Gaddy, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and an expert in Russia’s energy policy. “It is the heart of what he has done from the very beginning.”
Indeed, from his earliest days in power in 2000, Mr. Putin, who left the presidency in 2008 and became prime minister, decided natural resource exports and energy in particular would not only finance the country’s economic rebirth but also help restore Russia’s lost greatness after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Just this month, Mr. Putin’s personal immersion in the topic was on full display as he ordered natural gas shut off to Ukraine, in the process cutting supplies to Europe. It was portrayed by the Kremlin as a protracted commercial dispute with Ukraine. But the hundreds of thousands of shivering gas customers in the Balkans and Eastern Europe sent an unmistakable message about the Continent’s reliance on Russian supplies — and Mr. Putin’s willingness to wield energy as a political weapon.
When talking about energy, he often rattles off obscure statistics not often heard outside a Houston boardroom, like average daily production of fields and throughput capacity of pipelines.
Mr. Putin “clearly knows as much about BP’s business in Russia as I do,” Anthony B. Hayward, BP’s chief executive, once said after a meeting with him.
In fact, the standoff in Ukraine was just one part of a far larger Russian playbook on natural gas policy under Mr. Putin. In the past year, Russia has formed a cartel-like group with Middle Eastern nations with the goal of dampening global competition in natural gas, sewn up sources of supply in Central Asia and North Africa with long-term contracts to thwart competitors and used its military to occupy an important pipeline route in Georgia.
And this broader struggle extends over a dozen countries from Azerbaijan to Austria. In its sprawl and slow pace, it is often compared to the 19th-century struggle for colonial possession in Central Asia known as the Great Game. In the modern variant, Mr. Putin, a master strategist, has proved far more effective than his European counterparts.
“He has been thinking for some time, ‘What are the means and tools at Russia’s disposal, to make Russia great?’ ” said Lilia Shevtsova, a researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Center. In the post-Soviet world, she said, Mr. Putin concluded that “military power would no longer be sufficient.”
A spokesman for Mr. Putin, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that the energy market “was, is and will remain a strategic sphere for Russia” and that government leaders in Moscow should be versed in the topic. Mr. Peskov denied the Kremlin used exports for political purposes. Of Mr. Putin’s deep personal knowledge of the business, he said the prime minister showed a similar attention to detail in other matters, too.
In this contest, Russia’s overarching goal is to prevent the West from breaking a monopoly on natural gas pipelines from Asia to Europe. Boris E. Nemtsov, a former Russian first deputy prime minister who is now in the opposition, said: “It is the typical behavior of the monopolist. The monopolist fears competition.”
As they did two years ago after a similar supply disruption, European officials have promised in the wake of the Ukraine dispute to take steps to diversify the Continent’s sources of gas to end its reliance on Russia, which supplies nearly 30 percent of the total. European dependence is expected to grow as North Sea gas fields decline.
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At a conference in Budapest on Tuesday, Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek of the Czech Republic called for a renewed effort to build the long-delayed Nabucco pipeline to bring Central Asian gas to Europe without passing through Russian territory.
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Times Topics: Vladimir V. PutinBut there is a reason the project has never gotten off the ground: as determined as Europe is to end its reliance on Russian gas, Mr. Putin is equally adamant about extending it.
The Nabucco pipeline was proposed in 2002 by executives from European energy companies with the express intent of undercutting Russia’s gas monopoly. It would pass through Turkey and Georgia to the Caspian Sea.
Under the best of circumstances, building an international pipeline is an intricate and arduous process, technically, financially and politically. However, Nabucco’s planners rapidly discovered that their biggest obstacle was not a mountain chain or a corrupt local politician, but Mr. Putin himself. When OMV, the Austrian energy company, formally created a consortium for Nabucco in 2005, he responded with a competing idea: a pipeline called South Stream that would terminate at the same gas storage site in Austria, but originate in Russia and bypass Ukraine by traveling under the Black Sea.
In a contest often compared to chess, this Russian countermove, like all good chess moves, was both offensive and defensive.
To pay the hefty upfront construction costs, a pipeline needs both an assured source of supply and a market for the gas it transports. The South Stream pipeline would flood the gas market in southeastern Europe, locking up the customers the bankers behind Nabucco were counting on to finance the project.
At the same time it would undermine Ukraine’s domination of gas lines headed west, one of the biggest obstacles to Russian domination of the European gas market.
But Mr. Putin did not stop there. Leaving nothing to chance, he also took steps to choke off potential sources of upstream gas supplies deep in Central Asia.
The race to secure these rich sources of natural gas unexpectedly accelerated in 2006 with the death of the eccentric and isolationist dictator of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov. While energy executives around the world rushed to Ashgabat, the Turkmen capital, to meet the new leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, a former dentist, Mr. Putin was the first to cut a big deal.
Smiling and holding shovels at a televised ceremony to mark the start of construction, Mr. Putin and Mr. Berdymukhammedov agreed in 2007 to build a pipeline north, to Russia, depriving Nabucco of potential supply. It was not until 2008 that European Union officials got to Ashgabat with a memorandum of understanding for a trans-Caspian pipeline that could link to Nabucco. It has yet to be acted upon.
Farther west, it was the same story.
In February 2008, Mr. Putin signed an agreement with Bulgaria — over the objections of the United States and in spite of Bulgaria’s status as a new NATO member — making it a partner in the South Stream pipeline.
And in April 2008, Mr. Putin was in Athens, cutting a deal for a spur of South Stream. In this flurry of diplomacy he again beat his Western opponents. The United States State Department’s point man on Eurasian pipelines, Matthew J. Bryza, in Athens the next day, could only rue the signed deal. Mr. Bryza was left explaining to the Greeks: “If you have only one supplier of feta, you’re in a vulnerable position. The same for gas.”
The West still had an important pipeline partner in Georgia, a critical geographical link. But that all but evaporated in the brief war last summer.
By 2007, a pipeline section had been laid across Georgia, the Baku-Erzurum pipeline, which is now used for local distribution but will become a part of the Nabucco pipeline, if it is ever built. This brought the struggle for Nabucco to a pivotal stage, for it was now playing out along a storied trade route in the petroleum business, and one highly sensitive to the Russians.
In the 19th century the Rothschild banking family and the Nobel brothers of Sweden had built a railroad and pipeline across Georgia to sell Baku oil, undercutting the near monopoly in the business, Standard Oil of the United States, which was supplying Europe with kerosene produced in America.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the revival of this pre-Bolshevik energy corridor became a major foreign policy goal of the United States, intended to strengthen the economic independence of former Soviet states and diversify world oil supplies away from the Middle East. At a narrow point, the pipeline route passes just south of the Russian-controlled enclave of South Ossetia and north of another Russian ally, Armenia.
The August war sent a chill through boardrooms in the West when, for example, Russian tanks scurried back and forth over one of the buried pipelines and one crew occupied a pumping station. Russia, said Svante Cornell, a specialist on Central Asia and the Caucasus at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, sent a simple message: “We can blow this up at any time.”
While his track record is very strong, Mr. Putin is not infallible. Last summer he made a rare mistake by locking in long-term contracts for Central Asian gas at close to the height of the market — $340 for 1,000 cubic meters in 2009. While Mr. Putin achieved his goal of depriving Nabucco of more potential sources, Russia is now selling that gas in a down market to Ukraine for an average of less than $240 per 1,000 cubic meters — one possible reason, energy experts have said, that Mr. Putin tried to force Ukraine to pay more for gas this winter.
Despite its best intentions, Europe is likely to remain dependent on Russian energy supplies for the foreseeable future and, perhaps, indefinitely if Mr. Putin has his way. And that reflects his long-held beliefs.
As far back as 1997, while serving as deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Mr. Putin earned a graduate degree in economics, writing his thesis on the economics of natural resources.
Later, when scholars at the Brookings Institution analyzed the text, they found 16 pages had been copied without attribution from a 1978 American business school textbook called “Strategic Planning and Policy,” by David I. Cleland and William R. King of the University of Pittsburgh. Mr. Putin has declined to comment on the allegation.
Tellingly, the passages they say were plagiarized relate to the indispensable role of a chief executive in planning within a corporation — the need for one man to have strategic vision and control.
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