RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES PROPOSES FSB AS BETTER

UNCLAS MOSCOW 000369 SIPDIS SENSITIVE DEPARTMENT FOR ISN/WMDT A. GRANT, T. KATSAPKIS DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY FOR M. WITTROCK E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PARM PREL GKGIC PTER KSCA KNNP RS SUBJECT: RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES PROPOSES FSB AS BETTER INTERLOCUTOR ON DRAFT MOU AND IA ON NUCLEAR AND RADIOACTIVE DETECTION COOPERATION REF: A) State 125153 B) Moscow 03648 ¶1. (SBU) During a February 11 meeting with Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Nikolay Laverov, EST counselor and staff inquired about the proposed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and Implementing Agreement (IA) between the Department of Homeland Security and the RAS on cooperative research and development in the areas of radioactive and nuclear detection (ref B). Laverov informed Emboffs that the RAS supports the MOU and IA in principle. However, RAS is not the best counterpart to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on this MOU because RAS is not a ministry. He therefore forwarded the MOU and IA to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a request for its decision as to which agency or ministry would be a more appropriate Russian signatory to these agreements. He offered his judgment that a more appropriate organizational counterpart to DHS might be the Federal Security Service (FSB) due to its "similar structures," just as the FSB has taken the lead in bilateral anti-terrorism cooperation. Laverov also suggested that other governmental agencies, like RAS or Rosatom, might also participate in the process in some support capacity. ¶2. (SBU) Laverov, as a member of the Science Council of the RF Security Council, offered to take the matter up personally with RF Security Council Deputy Secretary FSB Colonel-General Valentin Alekseyevich Sobolev. Laverov explained that Sobolev was previously involved in U.S.-Russian anti-terrorism cooperation activities. Sobolev is a career KGB (now FSB) officer who was appointed First Deputy Director of the Federal Counter-intelligence Service in 1994 and First Deputy Director of FSB in 1997. In 2007, Sobolev was appointed Acting Secretary of the RF's Security Council after Sergey Ivanov left the post. BEYRLE