NATO Ministers Face Uneasy Meeting
09/29/2006
PORTOROZ, Slovenia (AP) - NATO defense ministers faced a tense meeting with their Russian counterpart Friday after the Western alliance angered Moscow by agreeing to deepen cooperation with Georgia.
Moscow denounced the move as a Cold War throwback that hurt Russian interests and could further destabilize the Caucasus region. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov threatened to send two divisions of Russian troops to the border with Georgia to ensure “Russia’s security won’t be hurt if Georgia enters NATO.”
The strained relations between Russia and Georgia worsened Thursday when Moscow recalled its ambassador, announced the evacuation of diplomats and complained to the United Nations about Georgia’s detention of five Russian officers on spying charges. Ivanov called Georgia a “bandit state.”
Georgia on Friday charged four of the officers with spying and was to put them on trial later in the day, said Shota Khizanishvili, spokesman for the Interior Minister. A fifth officer was released Friday.
Diplomats said an indignant Ivanov had strongly expressed Russia’s concerns at a reception with NATO ministers Thursday night. Some Russian officials have complained the Georgians were emboldened by NATO’s decision to offer them an intensified cooperation program, which is considered a step toward possible membership of the alliance.
NATO has sought to soothe Russian unease over its relations with Georgia, which eventually wants to join the alliance.
“We do not consider ourselves to be a threat to anybody,” NATO’s assistant secretary general, John Colston, told reporters.
On the first day of the meeting Thursday, the ministers approved an extension of the alliance’s Afghan security mission across the entire country, taking in the volatile eastern region and bringing up to 12,000 more U.S. troops under allied command.
The move is expected to take place in the next few weeks on the heels of the advance two months ago by NATO troops into the southern sector, which has sparked fierce resistance from Taliban fighters and dragged the alliance into its first major ground combat since its formation 60 years ago.
The ministers also agreed to provide substantial amounts of military equipment for the Afghan army, which has been fighting alongside NATO troops battling Taliban insurgents in the south of the country.
The move into the east also will bring to up to 14,000 the total number of U.S. troops under the command of British Lt. Gen. David Richards, the NATO commander in Afghanistan.
That would be the largest number of U.S. troops brought under a foreign battlefield commander since World War II, U.S. officials said. However, overall control of the mission lies with NATO’s supreme commander, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones, and a U.S. general is expected to replace Richards in February for a one-year rotation.
European ministers came under pressure at the meeting to send more troops to southern Afghanistan, where soldiers from Canada, Britain, the United States and the Netherlands have borne the brunt of the fighting.
“If you are a member of an alliance based on solidarity, you have to deliver,” said NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. “We need to do more.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and de Hoop Scheffer also pushed nations to lift restrictions on their troops in Afghanistan that limit their deployment to peacekeeping in the relatively safe north and west and prevent commanders sending them to the southern battlefields.
Germany, Italy and Spain all have large contingents in north or western Afghanistan and have ruled out sending them to the south.
The United States will continue its separate anti-terrorist mission to hunt down Taliban and al-Qaida operatives with about 8,000 troops.