Russian press: Russia's silence on Havel logical

Moscow, Dec 21 (CTK) - "Official Russia's" silence on the death of the last Czechoslovak and first Czech president Vaclav Havel is quite logical, Russian daily Vedomosti writes yesterday, recalling Moscow's similar approach to Havel in the past.

Russian leaders were absent from Havel's official farewell ceremonies as president and also from the Prague summit of NATO in 2002, which was considered a culmination of Havel's political career, Vedomosti recalls.

Owing to Havel's efforts, the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 as the first former communist country. That is why the above mentioned Russian absence was quite unsurprising, in view of the then Russian president Vladimir Putin's anti-NATO policy, the paper writes.

"It is also quite logical that on December 18, when Havel's heart stopped beating forever, condolences to the Czechs were expressed by tens of incumbent and former political leaders from all over the world - except for official Russia," Vedomosti adds.

The Czechs will definitely remember the Russian leaders' approach, it continues, citing Irina Kobrinska, expert from Moscow's Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

The Kremlin says Russia will be represented at Havel's funeral by ombudsman Vladimir Lukin, who will convey Russian condolences to the Czech Republic, the daily says.

It cites other experts remembering Havel.

Poet and human rights defender Natalia Gorbanevska praised Havel for having called on Czechs in exile, in his capacity as president after the 1989 fall of the communist regime, to return to their homeland.

No other post-Soviet leader did this, Gorbanevska said.

"Havel was a pragmatic romantic. He believed that not what is possible but what is correct is also realistic," Boris Frumkin, from the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Vedomosti.

He appreciated the quick process of lustrations that enabled the country's development in a cleared atmosphere and without a smouldering conflict, and its quick entry to NATO and the EU.

According to Kobrinska, it was owing to Havel that other "velvet revolutions" in Europe were peaceful.

"It would be an exaggeration to assert that Havel built the Czech Republic. His role in the first phase was to guarantee that the country will not divert anywhere, since after the fall of communism there was the danger of the region taking the path to nationalism and populism," said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the magazine Russia in Global Politics.

Now that the EU, with which the Czechs and Slovaks linked their future, experiences hard times, people with Havel's reputation would be needed to guarantee further developments to keep in the right direction, Lukyanov told Vedomosti.

In the conclusion, Vedomosti cites the statements about Russia Havel made in an interview for the Freedom radio, in which he called for the West's open and sincere relations with Russia, otherwise, he said, no friendship can be spoken about.

"It must not happen that for the sake of oil, gas and other economic reasons we would shun assessing the murders of journalists in Russia, suppression of human rights and other disturbing phenomena. It is a big problem, but the same problem has arisen in the West's relation to the Arab world. The dilemma rests in [the West] seeking ways to balance its particular economic interests and its critical stand on the state of human rights. If it harms human rights, it is too high a price," Vedomosti quotes Havel as saying.