The Times (UK)
September 27, 2001
Putin impatient for Nato welcome
FROM ROGER BOYES IN BERLIN
PRESIDENT PUTIN urged the West yesterday to begin negotiations with
Russia on admitting the country to Nato.
Meeting editors of German newspapers here, he showed some impatience
that the alliance was not moving faster to open up to Moscow.
�Everything depends, of course, on what is being offered,� said Mr
Putin, who is on a three-day state visit to Germany. �There is no reason
any more for the West to hold up such talks.�
Mr Putin told the German Parliament on Tuesday that security structures
had to be overhauled, that the Cold War was over and that instead of
superpower competition there should be a strategic triangle linking the
US, the European Union and Russia.
Earlier Gerhard Schr�der, the German Chancellor, had given Mr Putin some
cautious encouragement on entering Nato. The West has kept open the
vague prospect of Russian membership, but the offer was always a little
half-hearted because the nature of the alliance would have to be
completely rethought. Russian generals, too, were critical of the idea.
The terrorist attacks on the United States seems to have changed
Russian, or at least Mr Putin�s, thinking about the alliance. It had
been expected that he would use his German trip to set out the price of
Russian co-operation with the US-led war against terrorism. Mr Putin, it
was surmised, might demand a slowdown of Nato�s attempts to recruit the
Baltic republics to the alliance. Instead, the Russian leader is arguing
for the alliance to be thrown wide open and perhaps defined by the issue
of terrorism, the new global enemy.
Diplomatic analysts in Berlin believe that Mr Putin may be more
concerned with boosting Russian channels of communication with Nato than
with membership.
Serbian News Network - SNN
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http://www.antic.org/
