Russia expert hails Turkey's key role in achiving mideast stability

Turkey and Russia, two former empires, have been rediscovering themselves and becoming major players in the world, but Turkey is better positioned to be a force for stability in the Middle East, according to Dmitri Trenin, director of the Moscow Center of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Russia has limited interests in the region. There are a few projects that Gazprom and Russian Railways have been implementing in Libya, and some arms trade with Syria and Algeria," he said yesterday after taking part in a roundtable meeting organized by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV). He added that Russia is involved in tourism from Marrakesh to Dubai and that it's closely watching rising oil prices and the epochal changes in the Arab world. "In the Middle East itself, the Russian Federation, unlike the Soviet Union, has no geopolitical designs," he said. "Unlike the United States, Russia has no clients in the region to push out, in the name of democracy, or bail out, in the name of strategic interests," he added.