By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 28, 2004; Page A16
MOSCOW, Jan. 27 -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Tuesday that the United States might establish military bases in parts of the former Soviet empire, but he sought to reassure Russians that increased U.S. influence in the region does not pose a threat to them.
Russian officials, led by Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, have complained about U.S. plans to shift part of its European-based military forces east and south. The United States already has some troops based in Central Asia, and others are training soldiers in Georgia.
"We are not trying to surround anyone," Powell told Ekho Moskvy, an independent Moscow radio station. "The Cold War is over. The Iron Curtain is down. We should not see things in old Cold War terms."
Powell, finishing a four-day trip to Georgia and Russia, also spoke about the limits the Bush administration faces in affecting events in war-battered Chechnya. Powell said, however, that he was "impressed" with Russian President Vladimir Putin's "open attitude" toward a U.S. demand that several thousand Russian troops be removed from Georgia.
Powell criticized the Putin government Monday for backsliding on issues of democracy and the rule of law. But Powell said Tuesday that the Russian leader had assured him that the prosecution of several jailed Yukos oil company executives would be fair.
U.S. officials have said they believe that the arrest of the former Yukos chief, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, was orchestrated to dim his political influence and send a warning to other independent business leaders.
Putin "made clear" that he understood U.S. complaints, Powell said at a forum in Moscow. He added that Putin said that the Khodorkovsky case would be handled with "full transparency in accordance with the rule of law."
Later in the day, Russian officials said they had put 10 other people associated with Yukos on Interpol's wanted list, the Reuters news agency reported. Yuri Biryukov, first deputy to Russia's general prosecutor, told the Interfax news agency that the 10 included three major shareholders of Yukos, Leonid Nevzlin, Vladimir Dubov and Mikhail Brudno, who are reported to have fled Russia. Biryukov said the other seven were charged with setting up firms that helped Yukos evade taxes.
"All of them are mentioned in an international warrant sanctioned by the court. They are accused of evading payment of taxes and also a number of other crimes," Biryukov said.
Before he left Moscow, Powell said the Russians should see the U.S. military moves as positive, given improved U.S.-Russian cooperation against terrorism and trafficking in drugs and people.
"Are we pointing a dagger in the soft underbelly of Russia? Of course not," Powell said. "What we're doing is working together against terrorism."
The United States established bases in the Central Asian countries of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to help fight the Afghan war in 2001. The Russians recently opened a base in Kyrgyzstan, just a few miles from the U.S. facility. Russia bristled at the U.S. decision in 2002 to help train Georgian forces to clear Muslim rebels and alleged terrorists from the Pankisi Gorge on the border with Chechnya.
In efforts to reduce and realign U.S. forces in Europe, Pentagon officials have discussed Romania, Poland and Bulgaria as potential sites for U.S. bases. Powell referred to the sites Tuesday as "temporary facilities."
"These would not be big bases of the kind that we had in Germany during the days of the Cold War," Powell said. "These might be small places were we could go and train for a brief period of time or use air bases . . . to get to dangerous places -- crisis places -- in Central Asia, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East."
