Russia flexing its muscle......

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Russia in defence warning to US

Russia may stop implementing a key defence treaty because of concerns over US plans for a missile shield in Europe, President Vladimir Putin said.

Mr Putin made the threat during his annual address to parliament - which he said would be his last as president.

He also hit out at an influx of foreign money which he said was being used to meddle in Russia's internal affairs.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dismissed Russian concerns over the missile shield as "ludicrous".

BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says Mr Putin's speech marks a significant raising of diplomatic stakes.

The Russian president suggested that his country should freeze its compliance with the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty - which limits military deployments across the continent - until all Nato countries had ratified it.

The treaty was adapted in 1999 after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, but Nato states have not yet ratified the new version, linking it to the withdrawal of Russian forces from Georgia and Moldova.

Mr Putin accused Nato states of exploiting the situation to increase their military presence near Russia.

He said that the Russian moratorium would continue "until all countries of the world have ratified and started to strictly implement it".

If there was no progress at upcoming talks between Nato and Russia, Russia would "look at the possibility of ceasing our commitments under the CFE treaty", he said.

The US wants to station 10 interceptor missiles in Poland, with radar operations in the Czech Republic - which Russia strongly opposes.

"The Russians have thousands of warheads. The idea that you can somehow stop the Russian strategic nuclear deterrent with a few interceptors just doesn't make sense," said the US secretary of state in Oslo, ahead of the Nato-Russia meeting.

Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that he would seek a further explanation of Russia's position at the talks.

'Meddlers'

Mr Putin also hit out at those who he said were using democracy as a pretext to interfere in politics.

"There is a growing influx of foreign cash used to directly meddle in our domestic affairs," Mr Putin said.

"Not everyone likes the stable, gradual rise of our country," he said. "There are some who are using the democratic ideology to interfere in our internal affairs."

He did not specify those responsible, but in the past Russian authorities have accused the West of funding groups that oppose the government.

He also called for a moment of silence in memory of former President Boris Yeltsin, whom he said had laid the foundations for a changed Russia. He called for a library to be established in Mr Yeltsin's name.

Russia in defence warning to US

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Excerpts: Putin's address

Vladimir Putin has attacked foreign intervention in Russia, the US missile defence plan and called for an increase in domestic oil processing in a defiant final annual address to parliament before he steps down as Russian president in 2008.

ON FOREIGN INTERVENTION
Some want to return to the past to rob the people and the state, to plunder the natural resources and deprive our country of its political and economic independence. The financial flow from abroad is expanding to intervene in our internal affairs.

Democratising slogans are used, but the goal is the same: to gain unilateral advantages and personal benefits, to secure one's own interests. Some people are even using the most dirty techniques, trying to incite interethnic and interconfessional conflicts in our multinational, democratic country. In this regard, I urge you to quickly adopt amendments to legislation that toughen responsibility for extremist activities.

ON OIL
In 2006 Russia was the world's top oil producing country. But in the area of oil processing we are fundamentally lagging behind. The government should draw up a system of measures to stimulate an increase in the processing of raw materials within Russia.

Without infringing the interests of our foreign partners, we should nonetheless think of the development of our own processing base.

ON MISSILE DEFENCE
It is obvious that the United States' plans to deploy a missile defence system in Europe are not exclusively a Russian-American relations problem. To some extent it affects the interests of all European states, including those that are not Nato members This issue deserves, I would even say demands, to be discussed at the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe), in the framework of the organisation's military-political dimension.

It is time to fill the OSCE's activities with real content, to steer the organisation to face the problems that truly concern the peoples of Europe, rather than merely seeking fleas across the former Soviet Union.

ON HIS SUCCESSOR
The next state of the nation address will be given by another head of state ... it is premature for me to declare a political will.

ON BORIS YELTSIN
He considered a direct, open dialogue with people to be exceptionally important. He considered it necessary to present the problems and priorities of state policy for public discussion. He saw in that one of the most important tools for uniting society, tools for real democracy.

The real threat to the security of Russia and its integrity was separatism. In this respect, there was a critical lack of resources to solve the most fundamental, vital problems. But it was precisely in that period - in that difficult period - that the foundation of future changes was laid.

ON THE MILITARY
The re-equipment of units with new and modernised weapons and technology is going according to plan.

An important indicator of the state of the armed forces is the state of the social guarantee system for military personnel and their family members. By 2010, the task to give them permanent housing has to be solved unconditionally.

ON RUSSIA'S ECONOMY
Despite the social and political problems, we built a new life. As a result, the situation in the country - slowly, step by step - began to change for the better. Now, not only have we fully ended the decline of production, we have become one of the ten biggest economies in the world.

ON 2007 PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS
The forthcoming election to the State Duma will be based for the first time on the so-called proportional system. This means that only political parties will take part in the election.

I would stress that we have knowingly taken this, in essence revolutionary, step and have seriously democratised the electoral system. We should directly say that previous elections based on the old single-seat system, or single-seat constituencies to be exact, did not prevent influential regional structures from passing their so-called own candidates with the use of administrative resources.

I'm convinced that the new electoral procedure will not only step up the parties' influence over the formation of democratic power, but will also contribute to the growth of rivalry among them. Consequently, it will strengthen and improve the quality of the Russian political system .

ON NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS
In democratic conditions, it is impossible to imagine political processes without the participation of non-governmental associations, without consideration for their views and positions.

The number of non-governmental organisations operating in this country is also growing, as is their number of voluntary members, who perform various socially important functions, and various kinds of socially important work. There are already about eight million of them in Russia. All these are real indicators of an active civil society forming in Russia.

Excerpts: Putin's address

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It looks like Putlin, is flexing his muscles.

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Russia threatens Estonia over removal of Red Army statue

Russia is threatening to break off diplomatic relations with Estonia in the escalating row over the "blasphemous" removal of the Red Army memorial in the centre of Tallinn.

The statue of the Bronze Soldier was taken down and shifted to a secret location as an emergency measure at 3am (0100 BST) this morning, after it became the focus of rioting last night in which one person died, 12 police officers and 44 protesters were injured, and more than 300 were arrested.

Estonian police were forced to fire flash grenades and wield rubber batons to hold back the more than 1,000 pro-Russian demonstrators, many of them drunken youths hurling rocks and bottles, as six hours of rioting and looting unfolded, in the worst scenes of unrest since Estonia won its independence from the collapsed Soviet Union in 1991.

To show its extreme displeasure that the statue has been moved, the Federation Council - the upper house of the Russian parliament - today voted unanimously to recommend withdrawing the Russian ambassador from Tallinn.

"The dismantling of the monument to the liberators from fascism on the eve of May 9 is another episode in the policy pursued by supporters of Nazism, which is disastrous for the Estonian people," said Mikhail Margonov, the head of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council.

Konstantin Kosachyov, his counterpart in the lower house of the Russian Parliament, said that taking the statue down was "barbaric".

He added: "We will of course demand from the executive the toughest possible reaction to what is happening in Estonia."

The Russian Foreign Ministry meanwhile described the removal of the statue as "blasphemous", and promised that Russia would re-examine its relations with Estonia.

"We must react without hysterics, but take serious steps that would show our true attitude to this inhuman deed," said Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister.

The six ft (2m) statue of the Bronze Soldier inspires powerful and conflicting emotions. For Russia, and for the large Russian ethnic minority in Estonia, it is the symbol of liberation from Nazism and victory after the atrocities carried out by Nazi troops.

The belief that dead Red Army soldiers are buried beneath the monument increases its mystique, and any attempt to remove it is described as fascist.

For ethnic Estonians, however, the statue symbolises the horrors of nearly 50 years of Soviet occupation.

"In our minds, this soldier stands for deportations and murders, the destruction of our country, not liberation," said Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the Estonian President. "It is a monument to mass murder."

The Estonian Government voted last year to move the monument to a less prominent spot than at the centre of a square in the heart of Tallinn, the Estonian capital. The vote was prompted by scuffles around the memorial between pro-Russian and ethnic Estonian groups.

A white pavilion was set up around the statue yesterday, as a prelude to moving the statue and excavating its foundations, so that the remains of Red Army soldiers buried there could be disinterred and moved. They and the statue were to be relocated to the Defence Forces cemetery outside Tallinn.

Throughout the day, pro-Russian demonstrators kept up a largely peaceful protest around the statue, but as night fell the demonstration tipped over into violence.

Andrus Ansip, the Estonian Prime Minister, said that the riots had forced the Government's hand.

"We wanted to move the statue in an open and decent way, but unfortunately failed to do so because of vandalism and violence," said Mr Ansip.

A government spokesman added that the riots showed that the protesters were just troublemakers who "have nothing to do with respecting and protecting the memories of those who fell during World War II".

As shopkeepers in central Tallinn began clearing away the broken glass and reckoning the damage, police said that the victim of last night's riot was a 20-year-old youth, named only as Dimitri. He was stabbed to death.

Estonian state prosecutors say that they have "no reason to link his death to police activity".

Relations between the two countries have been tense since independence in 1991. Moscow has repeatedly accused Estonia of violating the rights of its Russian ethnic minority, which represents around one third of the country's 1.3 million population.

Russia threatens Estonia over removal of Red Army statue