Tensions over the Litvinenko case are not the harbingers of a new Cold War, argues john lloyd |
 |
These are not Soviet times, however much the parallels are raised. In the debate in the House of Commons yesterday following Foreign Secretary David Miliband's announcement that he would expel four Russian diplomats - a fraction of the 30 secret agents said to be now resident in London - the former Europe Minister Denis MacShane noted that where British communists had once gone to Moscow to get their orders, now British capitalists formed a third column, pleading for good relations so that business could go on.
It was a good if exaggerated point. In today's issue of Nezavisimaya Gazeta [Independent], a Russian working for the London consulting company Global Insight, Dr Natalya Leshenko, said that further sanctions on trade might be applied, but thought it unlikely. "There is," she told the paper, "a serious lobby in London determined to
|
|
 |
 |
|
| A few people on the burgeoning Russian Internet condemned the government decision to shield Andrei Lugovoi |
|
|
continue business with Russia. Above all, they want to retain the possibility of investment in Russia. Britain has both projects and technologies which are of interest to the Russian government."
Britain will soon need to have 10-15 per cent of its gas supplied by Russia, as North Sea supplies run down. While it will not be gripped as hard as Germany (40 per cent) by the Russians, that still constitutes a strategic economic interest.
Trade, investment and the export of expertise are all up sharply: both MacShane and Leshenko are right to point to what is a
significant brake on diplomatic action.
These are not Soviet times, 2.
The Russian press this morning did not fall into fits of Anglophobia, as they would have been required to do in the Communist era. They reported, fairly straight, the news from Britain and the reactions from the Russian administration.
They interviewed experts like Leshenko. Columnists and public figures weighed in, including Mikhail Gorbachev, who harshly 
|
