From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 1/24/2008 2:15 PM
RUSSIA WANTS NEW SECURITY SYSTEM

24-January-2008

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at his annual start-of-the-year news conference on January 23 that Russia and NATO need a new approach to security that offers collective security "without detriment to the security of others," mid.ru and Russian news agencies reported (see "RFE/RL Newsline," April 11 and October 2, 2007, and "RFE/RL Newsline," End Note, September 6, 2007). He noted that collective security depends on European countries as well as the United States and Russia. Lavrov slammed NATO expansion as "a policy inherited from the Cold War" and "not seriously motivated by security concerns." He added that "we hear that NATO enlargement is not directed against Russia... But [imperial German Chancellor Otto von] Bismarck said that in politics, especially in military affairs, you have to judge not intentions but potential. And the potential, the military spending, is increasing." Lavrov said that "future cooperation between Russia and Ukraine depends to a large extent on how [Ukraine's movement towards NATO membership] develops." He said that "we have our understandable, legitimate, explicit, and transparent interests in the post-Soviet region, but we intend to realize these interests through cooperation based on mutual respect and mutual benefit." He argued that "many people assume that Russia has such a firm position on Kosovo and warns that [its declaration of independence] will set a precedent just because it [secretly wants this] to happen in order to begin recognizing" other regions declaring independence near Russia. However, he said, "the Russian leadership has never said that after Kosovo we will immediately recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia." He said that Russia did not interfere in the recent Georgian presidential vote, "unlike others." Lavrov noted that Russia supports the strengthening of the EU, especially through its new Treaty of Lisbon, but he objected to what he called the manipulation of EU solidarity by individual countries against Russia. In this respect, he singled out Britain in the ongoing dispute over the right of the British Council to operate in Russia (see below), along with unnamed "neophytes" in the bloc. PM
http://www.rferl.org/newsline/2008/01/1-rus/rus-240108.asp