**OT**... sorry for the long post, but wanted to share this with you. It's about the russian troops in Kosovo I mentioned this morning. Notice the bold edit I did on the paragraph towards the bottom. Just cracked me up! lol! Not to encite any liberals here, but it just sounded exactly like the typical "he's so misunderstood and confused and trying to find himself" excuse they use so much.
Russia surprises, fails to provoke U.S.
(Reuters 06/15 13:28:55)
By Jonathan Wright
WASHINGTON, June 16 (Reuters) - Dealing with Russia is full
of alarming surprises for U.S. leaders these days but they are
rapidly learning that the best approach is to humor a country
whose pretensions far outweigh its power and influence.
As news of Russian troop movements towards Kosovo reached
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's plane last week,
the reaction among her entourage was a curious mixture of mock
Cold War panic and wry amusement at Moscow's antics.
The incident, still unresolved after several high-level
conversations between Moscow and Washington, was only the
latest case in which Moscow has sent confusing signals.
Last year, for example, the United States said the Russian
government might be trying to stop leaks of nuclear weapons
technology to Iran but maybe could not control the companies
and institutes engaged in the trade.
Early in the Kosovo conflict, while some Russian officials
compared NATO to Nazis, the government decided against a big
marine deployment to the coast of Yugoslavia.
"This mix of (Russian) motives and perspectives, as well as
weak lines of institutional authority and control, can make it
difficult to say what Russian foreign policy is," State
Department expert Stephen Sestanovich said last month.
The difference this time was that the gap between Russian
promises and Russian actions was wider than ever, suggesting
that the Russian government might be fragmenting.
"It looks like they lost civilian control of the military
for the day," a U.S. official said of the Pristina deployment.
"They (the Russians) told us the military got a little
ahead of the civilian leadership," State Department spokesman
James Rubin said on Tuesday.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov had assured Albright
that the 200-strong contingent of Russian troops would not
enter Kosovo without NATO's consent.
"We don't expect that to happen," Albright told reporters
on her plane between Macedonia and Washington.
Half an hour later, the Russians rolled in to the Kosovo
capital Pristina -- an act of defiance that by Cold War rules
could have brought the world to the brink of nuclear conflict.
But Albright's reaction was low-key. "They are going
through a very difficult period... They are trying to sort
themselves out, sort out what their role generally is in the
world and in the region," she told reporters. my edit lol
U.S. officials said Russian policy had been increasingly
unpredictable for several weeks.
When Western powers met in Cologne last week, the Russians
at first did not say whether they would attend, then whether
they would negotiate and finally whether they would agree to a
U.N. Security Council resolution on the Kosovo conflict.
In the end they did all three, reinforcing the U.S. view
that it is best not to rise to the bait of Russian public
statements which are probably meant for domestic consumption.
Through weeks of diplomacy on Kosovo, Russian envoy Viktor
Chernomyrdin cooperated closely with U.S. Deputy Secretary of
State Strobe Talbott, despite Russian outrage at NATO's bombing
campaign against Yugoslavia and at the civilian casualties.
"That's not what we're hearing in private," become the
standard U.S. response to hard-line Russian comments.
The Russian troop contingent in Bosnia, included largely to
keep up the appearance that Russia remains a big power, depends
on NATO forces for most of its logistics, they said.
On Tuesday the Russian troops at Pristina came asking for
water from the same British force to whom they had refused to
cede control of the airport.
The U.S. strategy for dealing with Russia remains
engagement, emphasizing the positive and playing down
unpleasant surprises like the Kosovo deployment.
"We want to get beyond this incident. I think it is
important not to blow out of proportion the significance of
this very small deployment as against the 15,000 KFOR troops
that are in Kosovo," Rubin said on Tuesday.
"It is quite remarkable that we now have a very serious
working relationship with a country which was our number one
enemy for fifty years. We're dealing with some of the most
complicated issues that can exist. It's just a matter to keep
working at it," said Albright.
REUTERS |
