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NATO Beefs Up Defense on Its Flanks
A meeting of the defense ministers of the NATO member states begins today in Budapest, for the first time since the war in Georgia. Membership for Ukraine and Georgia and defense of members and allies of the alliance sharing a border with Russia will be discussed. The Georgia-NATO commission will meet on Friday. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced yesterday that there was a possibility that the United Stets would hand over warships to Ukraine that could replaced the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
No representative of the Russian Defense Ministry was invited to the discussions of the war in the Caucasus, although Russian military and diplomatic figures were once common at such meetings. “Neither side is ready to restore the dialog now,” Russian permanent representative to NATO Dmitry Rogozin told Kommersant. Rogozin said that he took part yesterday in a meeting of ambassadors in Brussels chaired by NTO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and that had been enough to maintain contact.
Matters of direct interest to Moscow will be discussed in Budapest, however. NATO Supreme Commander U.S. Gen. James Craddock proposed earlier this week that the alliance develop a strategy to defend Eastern Europe. Craddock said Estonia should be the first object of the planned defense, and next year, NATO’s 60th anniversary, all of Eastern Europe should be considered. “Of course, after the events in the Caucasus, questions and concerns arose in many Eastern European countries that have their own history of relations with Russia. NATO could not help but to react to that mood,” a source in NTO headquarters commented.
Pentagon spokesman Jeff Morrel said that Gates fully supports the plans. In addition, the U.S. may take unilateral steps to protect against the Russian threat, providing Ukraine with warships in particular. Gates met with Ukrainian Defense Minister Yury Ekhanurov in Macedonia yesterday. “What does Ukraine need those ships for?” Rogozin asked in a conversation with Kommersant. “To ship arms to Sudan?”
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 09, 2008
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