From: Rick Rozoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [The following NATO press release posing as a news report, typical of the role the ostensibly free press plays in relation to remilitarized Europe, attempts to gloss over the incorporation of Eastern European and Caucasian (and Cental Asian) nations into NATO's new global network by portraying the exercise in question as one of 'hypothetical peacekeeping,' solely concerned with humanitarian and disaster relief tasks. Much as how NATO sold its 1999 war against Yugoslavia and occupation of Kosovo as a humanitarian mission and response to a refugee crisis. (The latter the result and not the cause of the war.) Any sensible - any sane or decent - person should be asking the question: Far from former Warsaw Pact countries being recruited into a constantly expanding NATO (and what conceivable 'Atlantic Community' stetches to Georgia in the Caucasus and Uzbekistan in Central Asia?), why haven't NATO nations pulled out of an aggressive miltary bloc that was created years before the Warsaw Pact and has continued in existence ten years after the dissolution of the latter? For any doubters, take a look at a map of the world and examine the expansion of NATO (and its so-called Partnership for Peace apprenticeship program) beyond its original charter zone into Eastern Europe, especially the Balkans, into Asia Minor and the Caucasus, into Central Asia right up to the Chinese border. Then look at the proliferation of NATO nations- dominated military alliances, new and renewed, in the Far East, the South Pacific, Latin America, West Africa, the Middle East and throughout the world. The purpose of NATO is transparently obvious: To effect and assist the military, economic, geopolitical and cultural domination of the world by the major Western powers. Period.] NATO in Georgia Exercises With Former Soviet Republics TBILISI, Apr 28, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) The United States and France will hold war games with the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine involving naval, land and air forces in Georgia this June, a general staff official said Saturday. The exercises are part of NATO cooperation with former members of the Warsaw Pact and other European states under the 1994 Partnership for Peace. "Cooperative Partner 2001" will test out forces' coordination in a hypothetical peacekeeping situation, and also their deployment in a humanitarian aid operation following an earthquake. Other participants in the June 11-22 exercises include two NATO members, Greece and Turkey, and six non-NATO members of the Partnership for Peace. These are two former Warsaw Pact members Bulgaria and Romania; Ukraine; Georgia; another former Soviet republic, Azerbaijan; and Sweden. The maneuvers will involve 1,300 soldiers and marines, 30 naval vessels, 10 aircraft and seven helicopters, said Irakli Batkuashvili of the Georgian general staff. Batkuashvili is responsible for coordinating his general staff with the Partnership for Peace, in which NATO cooperates militarily with non-member states, including Russia and other former constituent Soviet republics, as well other former members of the Warsaw Pact. Georgia continues to develop ties with the Atlantic military alliance despite protest from Russia, which opposes NATO expansion into the former Soviet bloc. ((c) 2001 Agence France Presse) _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
