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Potential bailout lurks for European Union

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Interested neighbor has $1 trillion now and wants to buy influence
Editor's Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.

WASHINGTON – As Europe's tumultuous economic gyrations are sending ripples throughout the world economy, some analysts believe it is the beginning of the end of the euro and even the European Union, according to a report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

However, one non-European outsider who is playing coy for now ultimately may intervene to provide cash-starved Europe with the bailout money it needs, and gain major political leverage in the process.

European leaders have been scampering to persuade Beijing that it needs help, but the Chinese have imposed a large number of conditions to ensure that their investment would be protected and there could be difficulties convincing the Chinese people to provide the tens of billions of dollars needed for bailout help.

The Chinese are interested primarily in some high technology companies to buy, but European leaders are more interested in the Chinese investing in European bonds, an idea that the Chinese are meeting with reluctance.

So, that country isn't China, at least not for no

Analysts, however, see another country willing to invest in critical European infrastructure. That country is Russia, and European leaders are all too willing to accommodate Moscow if it helps the European Union survive.

Thanks to ever-increasing oil prices that it charges in Europe, the Kremlin is prepared to provide the needed capital with fewer strings attached than Beijing.

While European leaders such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have been receiving all the publicity for dealing with the current economic crisis at the current G-20 economic summit, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has been less visible publicly but much sought after behind the scenes.

U.S. President Barack Obama also is at the G-20 summit, but the attention is far less on him than on Medvedev, since the Europeans know the United States doesn't have the bailout money. In hedging his bets, however, Sarkozy still is catering to Obama, saying that the Europeans "need the leadership of Barack Obama."

While Obama has been insisting that the EU has all the resources it needs to resolve the debt problems of the various European countries, Medvedev has been making a number of trips to France and Germany, two of the European heavyweights who have to come up with a working formula to rescue the euro and, in the process, save the EU from potential demise.

While Medvedev is expressing concern what adverse impact the European financial crisis can have on the Russian economy, analysts say he is seeing the situation as a chance to gain further political leverage in Europe.

The Russians are focusing on banks and energy companies, as well as buying into ports and airports. In Greece, for example, the Russians want to buy Athens International Airport.

Such Russian buy-ins are regarded as strategic assets that analysts say will give Moscow the political leverage it needs over Europe in the future.

Moscow also is in a position to offer cash toward the European bailout, since Germany had opposed any further support for the European Central Bank to handle other countries' debt, called sovereign debt, particularly for such southern European countries as Greece, Italy and Spain.

However, Russia has more than a half trillion dollars in currency reserves and another half trillion dollars in various other funds.

Keep in touch with the most important breaking news stories about critical developments around the globe with Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence news source edited and published by the founder of WND.