Russia may be boycotting this weekend's NATO summit in Washington, but senior officials from Moscow will still be in the American capital. The big NATO summit forced the two global financial institutions to shift parts of their meetings to avoid conflicts, but the IMF and World Bank have agendas of their own and Russia, according to IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus, is at the top. Russia is at this very moment probably the most difficult problem we must tackle. And indeed, here we are in a domain where there are no such things as evidences.
Nothing is evident there.
At a press conference Wednesday, Camdessus was answering questions about the fund's continued efforts to work out a way to resume lending to Russia. After all, went the questions, the fund itself has acknowledged that Moscow lost its last IMF loan because it failed to meet its promises on implementing reforms. The IMF head said there has been progress in negotiations with Moscow. He said the Russians have agreed to amend the current budget to limit the effective deficit and even to create a surplus of two percent this year not counting debt repayments. But he said the fund and the bank have both been working with Russian officials to adopt some major changes in the structures of major parts of the Russian economy.