You say this situation will be changed. Will it be changed because of the national referendum that activists are now organizing to overturn Putin's decree?

No, I don't think it'll take a referendum.

You think Putin will do it himself?

The problem can be solved. The environmentalists have a right to demand a referendum, but it's just a form of pressure on the government that needs to be applied. On this issue, I am on the side of the environmentalists.

What about the case of Alexandr Nikitin, the environmentalist who blew the whistle on the Russian navy's dumping of radioactive submarine reactors on the Kola Peninsula? The Putin government, as I'm sure you well know, is seeking permission from the Russian Supreme Court to re-prosecute Nikitin next week, on the absurd grounds that they violated his civil rights the first time they tried to convict him. This seems to send a message that environmental activism is not welcome in Russia.

I know this matter only in terms of the basics. I believe that some of the Russian institutions are going overboard on this issue and we must help them to put an end to this prosecution. Perhaps some government secrets were affected, but we are dealing here with a storage base for old submarines. I don't think that's a secret; all of us know it exists. I'm not really familiar with the details, but it seems to me that someone is aggravating that matter.

Some observers have looked at the apparent harassment of Nikitin, and the fact that Putin used to run the Federal Security Police (Russia's recast KGB), and concluded that democracy is very much under threat in Russia -- not just in the environmental area, but in general. The Western press reported that you met with Putin and afterwards praised him for restoring order to Russia. Is that true? And is there any contradiction between that and his apparent harassment of Nikitin and other environmentalists?

I don't see any contradiction. If there is a contradiction, well, life is sometimes contradictory.

When I met with Putin, I put a number of very direct questions to him. I asked him, 'Do you know that in our society and also in the media a lot of concerns are being expressed that you are trying to create a new authoritarian regime, that Putin will be a new [Yuri] Andropov, that Putin like Andropov wants to rule with a strong hand?' He rejected these concerns. He said he was very much against returning to the past, returning to the Communist system. He wants liberal reforms to take place in the country.

As regards his position on law and order, he said, 'I am in favor of a legal order. I'm in favor of laws and courts being effective, because in the kind of chaos that existed in Russia under Yeltsin, we had a situation of total disorder and arbitrary rule, and that was used by certain people, dishonest people.' So, when Putin speaks about order, he means we should combat that kind of lawlessness and crime and those people who appropriated a lot of property -- they too need to be dealt with. The Russian people support that.

The press often criticizes Putin, but people support action against organized crime, against corruption, against bribery. Unless Russia addresses this, Russia cannot succeed. What Yeltsin did resulted in a merger of corrupt elements of society with the government and business. Many people in government were promoted by Mafia-like structures. That is why I do support steps that are being taken, and I support Putin's position on this.

At the same time, I criticized Putin on a number of occasions. I criticized his behavior during the nuclear submarine situation. It was a mistake for him to act so late. It's interesting that the Russian society reacted so acutely to this -- not just the media, but public opinion, too, reacted to that kind of behavior.

And the president found it very difficult. We saw how Putin aged 10 years in just a few days. It was a difficult time for him. He's responsive, he's sensitive, he wants to look positive to people. And when he looked so stupid at a certain point -- he probably had been misinformed, I must say -- he made some accusations against the press, this is true. But this is because the press went overboard a little bit in criticizing the president. I believe there should be some limit to this.

The entire situation showed our people have a voice and a character, that they will not yield their rights and freedoms. And the media, too. Even though it was sometimes overly emotional, generally I would say that the press acted properly, the press forced the authorities to give information in the end. [It left me] rubbing my hands, I was saying, "Glasnost is working, it is working after all." Generally, I would say that Putin is committed to democracy, that he would like to help create real democratic political parties during his time as president. That would be a great success. I think Putin takes a very open-minded stand towards the West. He wants a constructive relation with the West.

He will be submitting to the state Duma a number of draft laws on the protection of investors and private property, on support for entrepreneurship. But all of us, both you here and those of us in Russia, should bear in mind that we cannot immediately apply all the Western criteria of democracy to Russia. Russia needs to go a long way to reach normal democracy.

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For a full transcript of this interview and more interviews with world leaders, go the State of the World Forum site.

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