[Q] -
AMANPOUR: Now you've got Russia invading Georgia. Is the advice to
the next president of the United States therefore, you have to go to
war against Russia in order to protect your NATO allies?
ALBRIGHT: ...I also think that countries have the right to choose
whatever alliance they want to be in. And the main thing, while I
fully agree that we can't go back to the Cold War and have a really
very bad adversarial relationship with Russia, Russia cannot think
that independent countries on its border are a threat to them.
So I think -- I personally believe that we need to go forward with
the Membership Action Plan for Georgia and for Ukraine, and keep
explaining that it is not a threat.
Amanpour then tossed the question to Colin Powell, saying, "if Russia
is (the aggressor) and you have to, you know, keep your NATO allies'
security, aren't you then committed?"
POWELL: Under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which is the
NATO Treaty, when one member of the alliance is attacked from abroad
-- meaning outside the NATO geographic limits -- then all members of
NATO treat that as an attack...
We cannot say to the Russians, "We are not going to allow the
Georgians or Ukrainians or anyone else to start down the path toward
NATO membership." It's not for the Russians to decide that.
Oddly enough, I can find no blaring headlines this morning claiming
Albright and Powell want to "go to war with Russia." Nothing along the
lines of what we saw after Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin
produced essentially the same answer from the vice presidential
candidate. -
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/09/albright_and_powell_we_may_go.asp
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
