Putin names new foreign minister, cuts several advisers
MOSCOW -- Days from an election certain to give him another four-year term, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia dramatically rearranged his Cabinet yesterday, reducing the number of ministries from 30 to 17 and naming a new foreign minister.
Putin had promised to unveil a new Cabinet before the election. Last week he selected a new prime minister, a little-known technocrat named Mikhail Fradkov.
The principal personnel change in yesterday's shake-up was the removal of Igor Ivanov as foreign minister, the Russian counterpart to the US secretary of state. He was replaced by Sergei Lavrov, Russia's UN ambassador for the past 10 years. Putin also reduced the number of deputy prime ministers from six to one, Alexander Zhukov.
Reducing the number of ministries was accomplished largely by combining two or three of them under a single minister. Putin didn't comment on possible layoffs under the newly merged ministries.
Analysts said there weren't likely to be any major foreign-policy changes under Lavrov, a career diplomat who was Russia's highly visible point man during last year's tough UN negotiations before the war on Iraq. Moscow opposed the US-led war in Iraq.
A dapper diplomat who turns 54 later this month, Lavrov speaks fluent English. That alone will be a change from Ivanov. American officials who negotiated with Ivanov said he understood English but always spoke Russian and used a translator.
Lavrov, a Moscow native, got his first overseas posting at the Soviet Embassy in Sri Lanka in 1972. Since then he's split his time between Foreign Ministry jobs in Moscow and UN posts in New York. His resume seems to have no gaps that would hint at a shadowy past, such as training or employment with the KGB or another Soviet security agency. However, any Soviet-era diplomat would have had to pass KGB muster before being allowed to work in sensitive overseas posts such as the United Nations.
Nor does Lavrov appear to be aligned with the "siloviki," the former spies, police agents, and military officers who've become so prominent and powerful in Putin's administration. One Moscow analyst, sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya, said more than half of Putin's inner circle hailed from the military or security sectors.
Putin's replacement of Ivanov had been widely anticipated. Ivanov originally was appointed foreign minister by former President Boris Yeltsin, and Putin has been methodically replacing those senior members of the so-called Yeltsin "family" with his own appointees.
Ivanov was given the influential post of secretary of the Security Council. Putin left the key Cabinet posts of defense minister and minister of emergency situations untouched. He also didn't replace any of his senior economic team.
