Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrives in Rome today for the start of a four-day visit to Europe. During talks with Italian leaders, who have friendly relations with Moscow, he will try to slow down expansion of the UN Security Council and prevent a breakdown of the EU’s dialog with Teheran on the Iranian nuclear program. Lavrov will also apologize to the Italians for the greed of Russia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
It was decided to combine the visit to Rome with a visit to the Vatican, where a meeting of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with the new pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Secretary of State of the Holy See, has been planned. After the ceremonial part of the program is over, Lavrov will proceed to a discussion of specific problems in talks with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini.

One of these problems is the situation around expanding the membership of the UN Security Council, which is causing growing concern in Moscow. Matters have reached the point where a resolution on expanding the Security Council may be adopted by a majority vote in the UN General Assembly, rather than at the UN anniversary summit (in honor of the organization’s 60th anniversary) in September, which the Russian president is planning to attend. But what is even worse from Moscow’s point of view is that the reform threatens to follow the least favorable scenario for Russia – it is expected that the six countries now being proposed for acceptance as permanent members of the Security Council will have the right of veto. This is disadvantageous for its current permanent members (particularly Russia), because this right will thereby be devalued.

This impending innovation does not suit Italy for other reasons. Rome is opposed to offering permanent member status to Germany, because in this event, Italy will be the only remaining European member of the G8 without this status. In addition, the Italians are insisting on increasing the composition of the Security Council to 25 members (Russia is insisting on a maximum of 22-23; fewer would be even better). Finally, Rome would like a seat on the Security Council reserved for Eastern Europe. This is unacceptable to Moscow, since this seat would be occupied by countries that are no great friends of Russia. Lavrov will probably insist it is better not to be in a hurry to reform the Security Council.

It is expected that the three men will also discuss the Iranian nuclear problem – Iran recently announced once again the imminent resumption of work on refining uranium ore. Moscow received this announcement with vexation, having already calculated possible losses from the freezing of long-term, expensive nuclear cooperation with Iran if the EU breaks off talks with it. The Europeans have warned in no uncertain terms that their next step will be to hand over the Iranian file to the UN Security Council and then the imposition of international sanctions against Teheran will become inevitable. In light of this, Moscow has set itself the task of convincing its European partners to show patience. Iran is acting unconstructively, but it is better not to bring matters to a confrontation; everyone together needs to persuade Iran to return to the moratorium on uranium enrichment operations.

In the area of bilateral relations with Italy, Moscow believes that matters are progressing quite well. Among other things, Lavrov and his Italian hosts are expected to discuss questions of deepening cooperation, especially military and technical cooperation in the high-tech field. One of the obstacles is the lack of the necessary legal base. Russia and Italy do not currently have an agreement on mutual protection of intellectual property rights in the sphere of military and technical cooperation; such an agreement would give Russia and Italy access to each other’s classified technologies and would exclude the transfer of these technologies to third countries. Moscow believes Rome is to blame for the delay in preparing this agreement.

Kommersant has learned from sources close to the Kremlin that Lavrov has been instructed to inform Berlusconi that it has determined the candidacy of the person who will be responsible on the Russian side for ties between business circles in the two countries and for settling any existing economic disputes and controversial situations. He will be Arkady Dvorkovich, the head of the expert board of the RF president’s administration.

However, until he takes up his duties, Lavrov will have to settle a current misunderstanding in Russian-Italian relations. The crux of the problem is the following. On March 25, an intergovernmental agreement on simplifying the practice of issuing visas to separate categories of citizens of the two countries entered into force, and was an object pride of Vladimir Putin and Silvio Berlusconi. But overzealous Russian bureaucrats spoiled everything – contrary to the spirit and the letter of the signed agreement, Russia’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which has the right to provide visa support to foreign businessmen, suddenly started demanding large sums of money from Italian businessmen for this service. They complained to their foreign ministry, and Italian diplomats wrote a complaint to Moscow, where a scandal broke out over it. As a result, Lavrov will have to give explanations in Rome and somehow smooth over the situation.

According to Kommersant’s information, another important task for Lavrov during his European tour (after Rome, Lavrov will visit Cyprus and Poland) will be to advance Russia’s interpretation of the recent events in Uzbekistan, i.e., that outside forces, including Afghan Taliban, incited the armed uprising, whose suppression was the exercise of the right of a sovereign state to self-defense. Apparently, Russian diplomats have recently been trying not only to justify Islam Karimov’s use of armed force, but also to prepare the world community for the fact that, from now on, similar tactics would be used to put down street anarchy throughout the CIS. Just recently, Lavrov spoke of this theory in a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. This elicited an angry reaction from her, since this theory would call into question the effectiveness of the United States’ actions in Afghanistan. Rice replied bluntly that she saw no evidence of Afghan involvement in the events in Andijan, and that in searching for the causes, one should look more closely at the situation in Uzbekistan itself.