COLD WAR RETURNS
US to Russia: stop 'dangerous game'
Condoleezza Rice, the United States secretary of state, warned Moscow that it was playing a dangerous game with the US and its Nato allies.
Rice said the West was determined to prevent Russia winning a strategic victory from its conflict with Georgia. She said: "Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used ... when it wishes to deliver a message: that is its military power. We're determined to deny them their strategic objective." "Russia will pay a price," Rice said on Monday before flying to Brussels for the talks. She has arrived in Poland to sign a deal that will see a US missile defence base built on the soil of the former Soviet satellite. But the plan to site 10 US interceptor missiles by 2011-2013 at a base 180km from Russia's westernmost frontier, has infuriated Russia, which says the Poles risk attack, if the deal goes ahead. Poland has in recent years joined the EU and is a member of Nato. The US says the missile defence system is aimed at protecting it and Europe from future attacks from states such as Iran. It rejects Moscow's insistence that it is a threat to Russia. Last week, the US pulled out of a planned four-nation naval exercise with Russia in the Pacific because of Russia's actions in Georgia. Russia's navy said on Tuesday it had cancelled a September visit by a US navy frigate to a port in Russia's Far Eastern region of Kamchatka.
Rice said the West was determined to prevent Russia winning a strategic victory from its conflict with Georgia. She said: "Russia is a state that is unfortunately using the one tool that it has always used ... when it wishes to deliver a message: that is its military power. We're determined to deny them their strategic objective." "Russia will pay a price," Rice said on Monday before flying to Brussels for the talks. She has arrived in Poland to sign a deal that will see a US missile defence base built on the soil of the former Soviet satellite. But the plan to site 10 US interceptor missiles by 2011-2013 at a base 180km from Russia's westernmost frontier, has infuriated Russia, which says the Poles risk attack, if the deal goes ahead. Poland has in recent years joined the EU and is a member of Nato. The US says the missile defence system is aimed at protecting it and Europe from future attacks from states such as Iran. It rejects Moscow's insistence that it is a threat to Russia. Last week, the US pulled out of a planned four-nation naval exercise with Russia in the Pacific because of Russia's actions in Georgia. Russia's navy said on Tuesday it had cancelled a September visit by a US navy frigate to a port in Russia's Far Eastern region of Kamchatka.
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO's secretary general, said: "We cannot continue with business as usual". "It's not business as usual. They're occupying a sovereign nation," he said.
Russian warning
"Poland, by deploying [the system] is exposing itself to a strike - 100 per cent," General Anatoly Nogovitsyn was reported as saying on Friday by the Interfax news agency.
Russia has accused Nato of trying to "whitewash a criminal regime" in Tbilisi and seeking to rearm Georgia's leaders. "Nato is trying to make a victim of an aggressor and whitewash a criminal regime - save a collapsing regime - and is taking a path to the rearmament of the current leaders in Georgia," Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, said on Tuesday.
"We hope that tomorrow's decisions by Nato will be balanced and that responsible forces in the West will give up the total cynicism that has been so evident [which] is pushing us back to the Cold War era,'' Dmitry Rogozin told reporters on Monday.
Russia has rejected a UN Security Council draft resolution demanding full compliance with the Georgia ceasefire, saying the text did not fully reflect a peace plan agreed to on Sunday.
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