‘Hard-liner’ with a subtle touch

Date: 08/02/1996

WHEN Boris Yeltsin was searching last month for a replacement for Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, analysts in Moscow said the ideal candidate must have three qualities - he (or she) must have Yeltsin's trust, win the respect of the new, pro-nationalist parliament and maintain good relations with the West.

It sounded like the résumé of a tightrope walker - and, by all accounts, Yevgeni Primakov fits the bill. For, if past experience is anything to go by, he is capable of walking a fine line and reaching the far end safely.

After all, 66-year-old Primakov not only survived, but thrived, under the successive regimes of Leonid Breshnev, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, gaining stature and prestige as each came to prominence with a changing ideology.

Always straddling the bridge between outsider and insider, Primakov's was not a household name before last month. He did not even figure in lists of possible successors to Kozyrev put forward by Kremlin-watchers.

When he was chosen on 9 January, newspapers in the West expressed shock at the naming of the nation's 'spy-master' to its top diplomatic post. Primakov, who had spent the past four years as head of Russia's External Intelligence Service - one of the organisations which succeeded the KGB - seemed an alarming throw-back to a previous era of Soviet Union history.

Yeltsin's promises that his choice did not signify a shift in Russian foreign policy were not enough to curb concern about the man described variously as a “hard-liner”, “nationalist” and, worst of all, “anti-Western”.

Primakov's first public appearances after being appointed to the foreign ministry did nothing to dispel those concerns. Stressing Russia's greatness and refusal to stoop to foreign powers, he said his priorities were to ensure that it kept its status as a “great power” and to “stop all those who would like to see the world mono-polar”. He has also made clear his opposition to former Communist bloc countries joining NATO.

But despite his growls, fears of the Russian bear may be exaggerated. His foreign policy statements already show more subtlety than might be expected of a “hardliner”.

And, although not the architect of such policies, Primakov has already overseen the signing of accords authorising the deployment of Russian troops alongside American ones in Bosnia and expressed support for the Start II Treaty, aimed at slashing long-range nuclear arsenals, which was recently approved by the US Senate.

Can the new foreign minister continue to grumble about the outside world and still keep his country's foreign relations on an even keel?

The two may seem contradictory to Westerners, but not to those in his native country - all Russians complain that their nation is being looked down on as one which has fallen from power and, say observers, “Primakov shares that resentment”.

But the new foreign minister, known for a realpolitik and an opportunism that override ideology, may need his pragmatism more than ever as Yeltsin courts a Communist-dominated parliament and voters swept up in a wave of nationalism.

Those who have followed Primakov's career expect him to embody a mixture of ideas. He has, after all, spent most of his professional life dealing with ideas. After graduating in 1953 from the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies, where he wrote a dissertation on Egypt, Primakov went on to work as a journalist. Employed as editor-in-chief at the state broadcasting committee, he brought his ideas to radio and television. The state then sent him to Cairo, his base while Middle East correspondent for Pravda.

Returning home in 1970, Primakov joined the USSR's Academy of Sciences, becoming its deputy director before leaving in 1977 to direct the oriental studies institute from which he had graduated 24 years earlier.

But it was during the second half of the Eighties that Primakov made his name as director of the Institute of World Economy and International Affairs (IMEMO), a vast office of some 2,000 people recognised as one of Russia's most prestigious think-tanks.

“It was a place where people could go a little further than what was permitted by the regime,” said a Western diplomat posted there at the time.

Primakov turned IMEMO into the nerve-centre for Gorbachev's startling economic and political reforms, which culminated in the Westward thawing renowned as glasnost.

Joining the president's inner circle, he accompanied Gorbachev to summits, including a trip to meet the then US President Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik for a showdown over reductions in their respective nuclear forces.

But IMEMO members do not remember him in glowing terms. “People at IMEMO thought he was a 'careerist' - that's a term of abuse there,” said one.

Primakov formally crossed the line from academia to politics in 1989, when he became a member of the Presidential Council. Gorbachev relied on him and repeatedly sent him to Iraq in attempts to prevent the Gulf War. Primakov, a close friend of Saddam Hussein's Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, was known to be sympathetic to the Iraqi cause.

Despite his central role in government circles, Primakov managed to keep himself in the shadows enough to preserve his political freedom. “I met him often at meetings, but he never made an impression. I'm not sure I'd even recognise him now,” said a Western military attaché based in Moscow at that time.

Primakov did, however, take a stand on one memorable occasion, as one of two presidential council members who opposed the 1991 putsch that attempted to overthrow the architect of perestroïka.

In gratitude, Gorbachev called on Primakov to split the KGB, establishing an intelligence service outside the control of the security police. “He went into the KGB to clean it up,” said a journalist covering Russian affairs.

This naturally did not endear him to colleagues at the KGB, with whom he was not popular. “He wasn't one of them,” said a Sovietologist with friends in the intelligence service. “They usually said he wasn't a professional,” said another.

While pushing to retain a single-party, Communist system in Russia, Primakov openly criticised the inflexibility of the party apparatus and called for more democratic decision-making.

But then the man who taunted Communists by extolling the virtues of the 'revolution' under way in his country shocked reformers by joining Yeltsin's team.

Now he sits in the foreign ministry, a Stalinesque tower still tattooed with the hammer and sickle. He is apparently receiving a warmer welcome in the foreign ministry than he did at the KGB. Foreign service officers, who felt abandoned by Kozyrev when they repeatedly saw him deferring to the West, see Primakov “as one of them, more likely to stand up for his department”.

A diplomat said Primakov's policies would not differ greatly from those of Kozyrev, but that he would make sure he did not appear as a Westerniser. “He wants to make people know he's different.”

The new foreign minister will not turn his back on the West, but is expected to focus more on other parts of the world, notably the Near and Middle East. “He's not antagonistic to good relations with the West. He's just opposed to concentrating on the West to the neglect of others,” said one London-based analyst.

“Orientalists were lost during the Eighties when Russia concentrated on the West. With Primakov, they will make a comeback,” predicted a Russian analyst.

The foreign minister may also shed new light on Bosnia through his intimate knowledge of and empathy with Islam. Already, he has shown foresight and intuition regarding Chechnya - in November 1994 he opposed the approach taken by Russia's intelligence and security services, warning that the Chechens would put up a serious fight.

But it will be hard to tell whether Primakov is making Russia's foreign policy himself or simply following orders. Yeltsin has kept a close grip on decision-making power and, with his new foreign policy council, is likely to call the shots. Nor do Russians expect Primakov to stride out on to the world stage with new foreign initiatives.

As one put it: “It will be more important for him to stay inside the system.”