March 30, 2008 (LPAC)--Dozens of Russian media today trumpet the report that Vladimir Putin will put building the Bering Strait tunnel to George W. Bush at their meeting next week, with headlines such as ``Putin and Bush Want To Launch Direct Train Service from Russia to America,'' and ``Will Putin and Bush Discuss Building a Tunnel from Chukotka to Alaska''? The subject of these articles is the megaproject of a multimodal tunnel beneath the Bering Strait, connecting the infrastructure of Eurasia and North America, which has been a centerpiece of the LaRouche movement's campaign for a Eurasian Land-Bridge development policy, over the past three decades.
``We told people that the Bering Strait project is Russian policy.'' commented Lyndon LaRouche, ``People who are looking for positive things in these times of great disaster should look here.''
Most of the Russian articles cite a feature in today's Sunday Times of London, titled ``Bridge-building Vladimir Putin Wants Tunnel to U.S.'' New in the Times piece is the report that ``a Kremlin spokesman confirmed last week that Putin seeks to build `a real bridge' between Russia and America, when he meets Bush at the Black Sea resort of Sochi.'' President George Bush will visit President Vladimir Putin at the latter's residence in Sochi, southern Russia, on April 6 -- two days after conclusion of the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, which both will attend. It is slated to be their last meeting before Putin leaves office on May 7.
LaRouche also said that this Putin offer of cooperation and development will create a real problem for Bush, a mental case who never completed rehabilitation for his substance abuse.
The Times linked this reported Kremlin comment to the past week's news that Roman Abramovich, the Russian multibillionaire, has placed an order with a German company for the largest tunnel-excavation machine ever built, a 19-meter drill. Abramovich is an ally of Putin and is Governor of Chukotka on the Bering Strait, while basing his financial operations in London.
Although the British press highlights the curious person of Abramovich, as a sort of one-man public-private partnership, it is the case that the Russian government has made a serious commitment to Eurasian infrastructure building, including the Bering Strait project, over the past year. In April 2007, the Council for the Study of Productive Forces (SOPS) of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Economics sponsored a Moscow conference on the tunnel project, at which LaRouche's paper ``Mendeleyev Would Have Agreed!'' was an invited presentation. The project was accorded big publicity in Russia, with SOPS officials appearing on national television and the Bering connection being officially incorporated into the plans of the state-owned company Russian Railways for rail construction until the year 2030. A special issue of the bilingual Russian magazine FORUM International featured the intercontinental Bering Strait link.
LaRouche movement conferences hinging on the Bering Strait concept took place in Kiedrich, Germany in September 2007 (transcripts and audio/visuals of conferences) and Ottawa, Canada in December (see EIR of Dec. 21, 2007).
