U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called for an investigation into Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Russia amid reports of widespread vote fraud and election violations, in comments a senior Russian official described as “strange.”

Speaking to the foreign ministers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) member-countries in Vilnius, Clinton said Russia’s elections were neither free nor fair.

“Russian voters deserve a full investigation of all credible reports of electoral fraud and manipulation, and we hope in particular that the Russian authorities will take action,” Clinton said, on Tuesday.

OSCE said the contest was slanted in favor of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party and cited numerous violations during the vote.

With almost all the votes counted as of Tuesday afternoon, electoral officials said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party had just under 50 percent.

President Dmitry Medvedev said the election was free and democratic.

Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the Russian lower house of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said Clinton’s “strange” comments would “not help improve bilateral relations.”

“If there are actions from the American side aimed at supporting those who Mrs. Clinton calls ‘democrats,’ we will react harshly and consistently,” Kosachev said.

Earlier, Clinton said the United States had “serious concerns” about the conduct of the vote.

Clinton also said Washington was concerned about harassment of Russia’s election monitors and political sites. Independent election watchdog Golos and several political media said their websites suffered sustained cyber-attacks on Sunday.

Source.

President Obama thanked the Russian leader “for Russia’s efforts at mediation in Libya” and said he looked forward to welcoming Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday, a White House statement said.

“President Obama spoke with Russian President Medvedev today to discuss a range of bilateral and international issues and to express his condolences on the tragic sinking of the MS Bulgaria,” the statement said.

“President Obama thanked President Medvedev for Russia’s efforts at mediation in Libya, emphasizing that the United States is prepared to support negotiations that lead to a democratic transition in Libya as long as Gaddafi steps aside.”

Russia abstained from a vote on a March UN Security Council resolution that opened the way for international involvement in Libya and has since criticized the scale and intent of the NATO-led Western campaign.

Medvedev met with South African President Jacob Zuma on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Sochi last week in an apparent bid to find a peaceful solution to the Libya crisis.

Russia has advocated the African Union taking a leading role in the negotiations and Medvedev’s personal envoy Mikhail Margelov held talks in Libya with both representatives of the rebels and the Gaddafi regime last month.

An unnamed top Russian official last week told the Russian Kommersant business daily that Gaddafi was ready to cede power in exchange for security guarantees.

Source.

Moscow (dpa) – The dispute over a NATO missile defense system in Central Europe, Russia has threatened a military response in case of failure of the talks. “If we are not NATO guarantees that the system is not directed against Russia, we will respond fully,” warned Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin on Friday, according to the Interfax news agency.

At the recent meeting with NATO defense ministers he had heard “empty words,” he criticized. Recently Kremlin leader Dmitry Medvedev had a withdrawal from the START agreement with the United States threatened to nuclear disarmament, should negotiations fail.

From Interfax Europe: BRUSSELS. Jun 10 (Russian Military News) – Russia is prepared to offer a complex military-technical response should NATO fail to provide serious guarantees…

AP – President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday warned the West it would face a new Cold War if it failed to address Russia’s concerns over a proposed missile defence shield for Europe.

Medvedev told reporters that the US decision to push ahead with construction of the missile defence system despite Russia’s objections will force Moscow “to take retaliatory measures — something that we would very much rather not do.”

“We would then be talking about developing the offensive potential of our nuclear capabilities. This would be a very bad scenario.”

The Russian leader also reaffirmed any earlier threat to pull out of the new START disarmament agreement that entered into force this year if the missile shield is deployed and operated without the Kremlin’s input.

“This would be a very bad scenario. It would be a scenario that throws us back into the Cold War era.”

Moscow has been fighting NATO plans to deploy a system the West sees as a means of protection from nations such as Iran but Russia believes could potentially be deployed against its own defences.

The Kremlin’s biggest fear is that the shield could one day be turned around and instead of shooting down incoming missiles be used to attack Russian soil.

Medvedev on Wednesday demanded a legally-binding assurance from the United States that this will never happen — a safeguard that Moscow says Washington is refusing to give.

NATO has thus far invited Russia to voice its concerns in formal meetings but refused to provide Moscow with a formal role in the shield’s operation that it seeks.

“We would like to see missile defence develop under clear rules,” Medvedev said in the first broad-ranging press conference of his three-year presidency.

Medvedev said he understood the United States’ argument that the shield was not aimed at Russia but rather nations such as Iran.

But he argued that such nations do not yet have the capacity to launch nuclear weapons at the West.

“That means it is aimed against us,” said Medvedev.

“And if not, invite us to cooperate” in the shield’s deployment and operation, the Russian leader said.

Bloomberg – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that Libya is at risk of total collapse and that his government will consult with China at a summit of emerging- market nations this week on how to respond.

“NATO isn’t in control of the country because they don’t have a mandate to carry out large-scale operations,” Medvedev said in an interview with Chinese state television channel CCTV, according to a transcript posted on the Kremlin website today. “In order to restore order, we have to act in strict accordance with existing international resolutions.”

Russia and China, which both have the power to veto United Nations Security Council resolutions, abstained from last month’s vote that authorized airstrikes by the U.S. and its allies to protect civilians from an offensive by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s forces. Russia has criticized the NATO-led campaign for violating the UN resolution by backing one side in a civil war.

Medvedev said all possible means must be used to bring about a cease-fire between the Libyan rebels and Qaddafi’s forces. He meets in the southern Chinese city of Sanya on April 14 with his counterparts from China, India, Brazil and South Africa, the other members of the BRICS group.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said in an interview last week that Libya could slide into chaos similar to that in Somalia.

The conflict in Libya pitting the eastern-based opposition against Qaddafi’s regime has become a “tribal war,” Ivanov said.

Somalia hasn’t had a functioning central government since 1991 and has become a breeding ground for pirates who attack shipping. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said March 2 the Obama administration was also concerned that Libya may become a “giant Somalia,” providing a base for al-Qaeda.

A shocking report written by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the meetings held between President Medvedev and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates this past week says that America’s war on Libya was “forced” onto it after French President Nicolas Sarkozy [photo top right with Libyan leader Gaddafi] threatened President Barack Obama with “total exposure” if the US didn’t attack.

Upon hearing Gates shocking admission of why the US began its war on Libya, this report says, Medvedev issued a warning that should too many civilians be killed America could expect Russian forces to move into the region to protect them, a warning that fell on deaf ears as Gates walked out of the meeting saying that he found Russia’s arguments “difficult to comprehend.”

Especially upsetting to Gates, this report continues, was Prime Minister Putin stating that United Nations resolution authorizing military action in Libya resembled the“medieval calls for crusades,”, a statement quickly rebutted by Medvedev as “unacceptable,” and who further warned that comments such as Putin’s could“lead to a clash of civilizations.”

The “total exposure” threatened by Sarkozy unless the US attacked Libya regards the American President’s most senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, who, according to this report, is the Iranian born “handler” of Obama for the “Moon Cult” factions of the Islamic World seeking to bring about the return of the prophesied redeemer of Islam known as the Mehdi.

Important to note about Sarkozy’s threatening to expose Jarrett for her extensive ties to the Persian Nation was her stunning revelation a fortnight ago before the Jewish Council for Public Affairs in Washington that she is of Jewish heritage herself, and not a Muslim as those in the US elite power structure had believed.

Though Jarrett’s Jewish background may have taken Washington by surprise, this report says it was long known to Sarkozy, who, according to the French daily Le Figaro, has long been a spy for Israel’s MOSSAD intelligence agency, and as we can, in part, read:

“A report reveals that French President Nicolas Sarkozy worked for Israeli intelligence for a long time before he was elected president. French daily Le Figaro has revealed the French leader once worked for the Zionist regime as a sayan, Hebrew for ‘collaborator’.

Ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky says sayans, who perform many roles, are Jewish citizens of other nationalities assisting Mossad. Le Figaro claimed that French police officials managed to keep secret a letter, which exposed Sarkozy’s past participation in espionage activities for Mossad.

The letter fixed Sarkozy’s alleged spying activities as far back as 1983.”

The reason for Sarkozy wanting the complete and total destruction of Libya lies in the threats made against him last week by the Libyan leader’s son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who threatened to reveal a “grave secret” that would bring down the embattled French President.

The “grave secret” feared by Sarkozy we can further read about as reported London’s Guardian News Service, and which, in part, says:

“Muammar Gaddafi’s son has claimed that Libya helped finance Nicolas Sarkozy’s successful election campaign in 2007, and demanded that the French president return the money to “the Libyan people”.

In an interview with the Euronews TV channel, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said Libya had details of bank transfers and was ready to make them public in a move designed to punish Sarkozy for throwing his weight behind opposition forces.”

Important to note about France’s relationship with Libya is that should it win this war it will have secured its energy security for the rest of this century as this North African Nation holds the largest oil reserves on the continent estimated at over 41 Billion barrels.  Even more critical to note about Libya’s oil is that is the lightest, sweetest and easiest-to-extract black gold left on Earth and costs just $1.00 to extract.

Equally critical to note about France’s relationship with Libya was its having signed over $27 Billion in agreements with this North African country this past January, all of which is endangering the collapse of the French economy should they be cancelled.

As we had, also, noted in our March 8^th report Global Resource War Warned Has Begun Between East-West, the vast water reserves of Libya (the largest ever discovered on the African continent) make this country a “prize” the West must have, and its military might will seek to ensure it gets.

Most appalling of the West’s war upon Libya is that it is coming at the expense of the African Nation of Ivory Coast where the UN estimates today over 1 million have fled their homes as civil war fears grow.

Most unfortunate for the hundreds of thousands of innocents set to die in the Ivory Coast is that their Nation has no massive oil or water resources for the West to attack them for, and leaving one to wonder if these Westerners have, indeed, lost what little moral conscious they had left.

To the outcome of the battle between the United States and France over the fate of Libya it is not in our knowing, other than to note the obvious that with each passing day this World of ours grows more dangerous by the hour.

© March 25, 2011 EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com.

BBC – Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev has said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s description of the UN resolution on Libya is “unacceptable”.

The rare rebuke came hours after Mr Putin criticised the resolution, which authorised military action to protect Libyan civilians.

Mr Putin said the resolution resembled “medieval calls for crusades”.

Russia abstained from voting on the resolution, under which air strikes are being carried out on Libyan targets.

Mr Medvedev told Russian news agencies: “Under no circumstances is it acceptable to use expressions which essentially lead to a clash of civilisations. Such as ‘crusade’ and so on.

“It is unacceptable. Otherwise, everything may end up much worse compared to what’s going on now. Everyone should remember that.”

Mr Putin had said UN Security Council Resolution 1973, which was adopted on Thursday, was flawed as it “allows for everything”.

The resolution authorises “all necessary measures” to protect civilians in Libya.

Mr Putin and Mr Medvedev’s comments are the most public sign so far of a split in Russia’s political leadership.

Mr Medvedev has traditionally been seen as “Putin’s man”, and many had expected him to return his title to the former President Putin at elections next year.

Analysts have suggested that Mr Medvedev is attempting to position himself as a modernising force in the run-up to the elections.

But in November last year, Mr Medvedev warned that Russia risked slipping into a period of political “stagnation” by being dominated by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.

Neither Mr Medvedev nor Mr Putin has publicly declared their intention to run for the presidency.

Haaretz - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday that Japan, reeling from a major earthquake, its ensuing tsunami, and a possible nuclear crisis was in the throes of a colossal catastrophe.

“If you look at what has happened in Japan, it is of course a colossal national disaster, a catastrophe,” Medvedev said at a meeting with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Russia has stepped up its monitoring of radiation levels in its far eastern regions after an earthquake and tsunami set off a series of accidents at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in northern Japan.

The Emergency Situations Ministry said that radiation in Russia’s Primorye region, which includes the city of Vladivostok and faces Japan across the Sea of Japan, was well within normal levels on Thursday.

“I hope there will not be such serious problems, such cataclysms” in Russia and its other neighbors, Medvedev said at a meeting at his Gorki residence, outside Moscow.

Several countries have expressed concern since Japan reported elevated radiation levels in the atmosphere after several explosions in the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Low concentrations of radioactive particles have reportedly been heading towards North America, while widespread panic has engulfed some Chinese cities.

Supermarkets in Beijing and other Chinese cities ran out of salt on Thursday as shoppers bought up the staple, fearing rumors that future shipments of sea salt will be contaminated by radiation from Japan.

Chinese stores have allegedly capitalized on the shopping frenzy, with the price of salt reaching unprecedented heights.

The people of Guangdong, Beijing and Shanghai have also been stocking up on iodine tablets, which can help to inhibit the absorption of radiation if used correctly.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday rumors about dangerous radiation levels are harmful and untrue, and they encouraged people not to panic. The organization implored the public to halt such rumors from spreading, which they claim is harmful to public morale.

Thus far, the immediate radius of the Fukushima plant is the only area deemed in danger of radioactive contamination.

Japanese authorities have called for the evacuation of residents within 20 kilometers of the damaged nuclear plant, and told residents within 30 kilometers to stay indoors.

Russia announced Friday that it may send one or even two of the high-tech warships it is buying from France to help protect a chain of islands that are being bitterly claimed by Japan.

The statement from Russia’s top general is likely to infuriate the Japanese government and further escalate a simmering row that flared during an unprecedented November visit to the Kurils by President Dmitry Medvedev.

The sides failed to make any progress on their historic dispute during a recent visit to Moscow by the Japanese foreign minister and have instead waged an angry war of words that appears to be becoming more heated with time.

Chief of Staff General Nikolai Makarov kept up the pressure on Friday by revealing that Russia was on the verge of sending at least one of its recently-purchased French Mistral helicopter carriers to the region.

“We do not exclude that one or possibly two Mistrals will be sent to the Pacific Fleet, including for the purpose of addressing security issues in the Kuril Islands,” Makarov told the Interfax news agency.

Read the full article.

WSJ – February 16, 2011 - Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said he is “ashamed” with the way Russia is run today and warned the Kremlin could face an Egypt-style uprising.

Nearly two decades after his reforms led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mr. Gorbachev denounced Russia’s “ruling class” as “rich and dissolute,” in an interview published Wednesday in Novaya Gazeta, the opposition newspaper of which he is part-owner. “I’m ashamed for us and for the country,” he said.

He lambasted the Kremlin for eroding the free media and elections that he introduced in the 1980s, and warned that its grip on power could be threatened.

“If things continue the way they are, I think the probability of the Egyptian scenario will grow,” he said in a separate radio interview released Tuesday, referring to the popular rebellion that ousted longtime President Hosni Mubarak last week. “Here it could end even more staggeringly,” he said.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on Tuesday, warned the West against supporting the popular uprisings in the Middle East in what some analysts saw as a sign of the Kremlin’s concern.

At present, public support for the Kremlin appears strong. Opposition parties, many of which have been banned by authorities, are small and weak. Police regularly disperse antigovernment demonstrations.

Mr. Gorbachev, who gets limited attention in the state media in Russia, has been speaking publicly in recent weeks ahead of his 80th birthday on March 2.

Still reviled by many Russians for bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mr. Gorbachev is probably more popular in the West, where he is credited with bringing an end to Soviet totalitarianism and the Cold War.

Current and former world leaders, as well as actors and other celebrities, are expected at a birthday celebration at the end of March at London’s Royal Albert Hall, according to officials at Mr. Gorbachev’s charitable fund.

Mr. Gorbachev has long been critical of the Kremlin’s moves in the last decade to roll back electoral and media freedoms, and in recent months has stepped up his criticism of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev.

“They’ve come to believe they’re the saviors of the fatherland,” Mr. Gorbachev said in the radio interview. “The policy they’re offering now is to throw everything behind personal power to keep it in their hands.”

Messrs. Putin and Medvedev have said they will decide together later this year who will run for president next spring. The Kremlin’s candidate is virtually certain to win. Many observers expect Mr. Putin, who was president until term limits forced him to step down in 2008, to return to the presidency next year.

Kremlin spokesmen weren’t available Wednesday for comment on Mr. Gorbachev’s interviews, but have dismissed his past criticisms. Messrs. Putin and Medvedev have said repeatedly they are committed to strengthening democracy.

Mr. Gorbachev hailed these public pronouncements, but said, “the smell of imitation is getting stronger and stronger,” as the pledges aren’t backed up with real changes.

“We have democratic institutions, but they aren’t effective, they’re used to cover arbitrary rule, abuse,” he said. “Society has been broken, it’s accepted the falsehoods.”