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By Judy Dempsey

Summary prepared by Hayk Sargsyan of CDI

With Chancellor Angela Merkel shifting German foreign policy more markedly toward the United States and the defense of human rights, Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, on Thursday warned the West against isolating his country from helping to broker disputes with Iran and other conflicts in the Middle East. His warnings come amid growing criticism by the Bush administration and several EU countries over Russia's crackdown on human rights groups and of the Kremlin's willingness to use its vast energy resources as political pressure on its neighbors.

Germany is still one of Russia's most important Western partners, despite Merkel's attempts to rebalance her foreign policy by breaking the special axis that her Social Democratic predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, had forged with Paris and Moscow at the expense of ties with the United States and the EU. Russia's image has deteriorated in Germany after Schröder's close ties with President Vladimir Putin came under close scrutiny.

The Economics Ministry in Berlin disclosed last week that just before Schröder left office last November, his government issued a credit guarantee of €1 billion, or $1.2 billion, to Gazprom, Russia's state-owned energy company, to build the North Sea Gas Pipeline with two German companies. Schröder was appointed chairman of the new company overseeing the construction of the pipeline shortly after leaving office, while the deal itself was clinched last September, just before Germany's parliamentary elections in which Schröder lost to Merkel, a conservative.

Lavrov said he had no idea if Gazprom - the world's largest gas company - would still take up the credit guarantee. "I know nothing about it," he said. He did say, however, that Merkel supported the pipeline, which will cost over €10 billion to construct. "We wish to diversify the routes of energy exports," he said, adding that the project would lead to more energy security.

Flush with a large trade surplus because of record-high energy prices that has enabled Putin to pay off debt to the Paris Club of Western creditor nations, Russia has more confidently taken foreign policy initiatives. These include the recent invitation to leaders of Hamas, the Islamic movement that won the Palestinian elections, to visit Moscow. Russia also offered to process uranium for Iran inside Russia in a bid to break the stalemate with the United States and the European negotiating group of Britain, France and Germany over Iran's nuclear program.

Lavrov said those initiatives were justified because Russia was not prepared to accept any "clash of civilizations" between the Western world and the Middle East. In barely veiled criticism of U.S. policy in Mideast, Lavrov said Washington's plans to democratize the region were obsessive. Lavrov insisted that Russia was pursuing an "unbiased" approach in the region that was crucial to global energy security. Even if all the ambitious plans are implemented to save energy, "the need by the world for energy supplies will not diminish," which is why a new concept of international relations was needed that involved Russia and Germany.