From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 4/9/2007 1:42 AM
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From The Times
April 9, 2007
Playing political poker with Putin is high-stakes game
Julian Evans

While Tatarstan’s economy is attracting billions of pounds in capital from the West, its political future hangs in the balance — and not for the first time.

“We could have been another Chechnya,” Rafael Hakimov, a presidential adviser, said. “The Russian tanks were surrounding our capital.” At the time, in the early 1990s, Tatarstan, a region fiercelyproud of its thousand-year history as a centre of Mongol culture and as the capital of the Tatar people, was close to declaring itself a sovereign republic.

It took the wiles of Mintimer Shaimiev, its president, to strike a deal with President Yeltsin, which gave the region some autonomy over its economic and cultural affairs. The result is that, uniquely among Russia’s 83 regions, Tatarstan enjoys a special status.

Mr Shaimiev has used those powers to make Tatarstan one of Russia’s most internationally connected regions. President Hu Jintao of China made a special detour there on his state visit to Russia last month.

Mr Shaimiev has come into conflict at times with President Putin, who is trying to assert the Russian federal government’s power over the regions. Yet his popularity in Tatarstan means Mr Shaimiev is one of the few governors who may be too strong for Mr Putin to cross. He is also pragmatic enough to find common ground with the Russian President and is a senior member of the Putin-backed political party, United Russia.

Tatarstan is negotiating a new agreement with the federal government. It looked finalised, confirming its powers of economic and cultural autonomy, but the Russian Duma in Moscow has failed to ratify it. Mr Hakimov said: “They took issue, apparently, with our desire to write the Tatar language in Latin, rather than Cyrillic, script.”

Some analysts wonder if the Duma’s failure to ratify the deal could be a precursor to a bid by Mr Putin to replace Mr Shaimiev with a more loyal ally, such as Rashid Nurgaliyev, the Tatar Interior Minister. Locals say that Mr Nurgaliyev is seen as an outsider and would not be accepted. It is more likely that, when Mr Shaimiev steps down, he will be succeeded by Rustam Minnikhanov, the Tatar Prime Minister, or Ilsur Metshin, the Mayor of Kazan.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article1629380.ece