U.S. doubts Russia will be a future threat
By Steve Holland
PRATICA DI MARE, Italy, May 28 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of
State Colin Powell said on Tuesday the world was safer now that
Moscow and the West had joined hands ending decades of enmity.
"The experience of the last 10 years is that, slowly but
surely, Russia has come to the realisation that its future lies
to the West and the West is coming to the realisation that its
future lies also with Russia," Powell said.
Powell, a former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff,
spoke to reporters at a summit marking the formation of the
NATO-Russia Council giving Moscow a say in some allied
decision-making.
U.S. President George W. Bush, during a week-long trip to
Germany, Russia, France and Italy, has spoken optimistically
about the future of Western relations with Russia.
He has developed a close personal relationship with Russian
President Vladimir Putin that he hopes will help further what he
calls a "new era of cooperation."
Bush and Putin signed a treaty in Moscow last week reducing
U.S. and Russian long-range nuclear warheads by two-thirds over
10 years, the crowning achievement of Bush's trip.
Powell said Moscow had found it essential to join its former
adversaries, ending an era of potential Russian threat to the
West.
"I don't think we're going to see a rerun of this movie,"
Powell said.
"The movie didn't play well the first time."
The United States has relied mightily on Russia for
intelligence-sharing in the war in Afghanistan and has thanked
Moscow for allowing U.S. forces to deploy in some Central Asian
countries.
U.S. EYES CENTRAL ASIA
Powell touched on several thorny issues in U.S.-Russian
relations, including growing American influence in Central Asia
which makes Moscow nervous.
"We think it serves our interest to work with the nations of
Central Asia, to have access agreements, to be able to go into
their nations at their invitation, to train with them and
perhaps, if necessary, help them in their own self-defence
efforts," Powell said.
There is no immediate end in sight to the U.S.-led mission
in Afghanistan to search out al Qaeda militants and the Taliban,
blamed for the September 11 attacks in the United States that
killed 3,278 people.
But Powell said the United States was not looking for bases
"in order to have a significant military presence in the
region."
Russia also is irritated over NATO enlargement which will be
the topic of an alliance conference in the Czech Republic
capital of Prague in November.
The Russian Foreign Ministry reiterated its opposition to
membership for former Warsaw Pact members even as Russia became
a partner in NATO.
"That does not shock or surprise me," Powell said. "But
there is also no doubt that NATO will be inviting other nations
to become members at the Prague summit later this year...Russia
cannot have a veto over who becomes a member of NATO or not."
As Bush wound up his trip to Europe, where critics have
perceived him as a unilateralist, Powell did not gloss over
disagreements.
But he said the president had been "very forthcoming" in
discussing those differences and that the United States would
"stick to its principled position."
Bush has been under fire in Europe over what many view as
his tendency to go it alone. Washington has pulled out of the
Kyoto global warming treaty and abandoned a pact setting up an
international criminal court.
European allies are concerned also about hefty U.S. tariffs
on steel imports, a perceived pro-Israeli Middle East policy,
and a desire to attack Iraq.
"I think we go home from Europe with everybody having a
better understanding of this way that we will do business --
consult, talk, meet," Powell said.
((Washington newsroom 202 898-8300, fax 202 898 8383, email
Washington.bureau.newsroom@reuters.com))
REUTERS
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