Russia warns of 'new Cold War' as US focuses on Mideast

 

 

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News - http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=russia-warns-of-new-cold-war-as-us-to-announce-new-mideast-strategy-2011-05-18

 

As the United States prepares to unveil its new Middle East strategy Thursday, major rival Russia has warned of a new Cold War era if an agreement on missile defense cannot be reached.
The comments by Russian President Dimitry Medvedev signal a new spat between the two major world powers amid ongoing unrest in the Middle East and North Africa.

“We would then be talking about developing the offensive potential of our nuclear capabilities. This would be a very bad scenario,” Medvedev said Wednesday in a rare press conference.
Russia is increasingly worried about U.S. plans to build missile-defense facilities in ex-communist Eastern Europe. It is also offended that NATO appears to have shunned its proposals for a joint missile-defense shield. Washington has already made deals with a number of Eastern European countries, including Poland and Romania, to deploy missile-defense systems, at the expense of angering Moscow.

“President Medvedev’s warning is nothing new, having been made before within the context of the ongoing debate on missile defense,” Semih İdiz, a foreign-policy columnist for daily Milliyet, told the Hürriyet Daily News on Wednesday. “Russia continues to be wary about this project, which also includes Turkey, but is hardly prepared to make this a major issue with the United States at a time of turbulence in the Middle East.”
Medvedev told reporters that the U.S. decision to push ahead with construction of the missile-defense system despite Russia’s objections would force Moscow “to take retaliatory measures – something we would very much rather not do.”
“This would be a very bad scenario. It would be a scenario that throws us back into the Cold War era,” he said.
The Russian president is engaged in a balancing act between appearing strong against the West and cooperating with it to the extent that he can, especially given the growing interest Russia has in Europe, according to İdiz.

NATO defense ministers will meet in Brussels in early June to discuss the alliance’s plans to move ahead with the missile-defense project, in line with its Strategic Concept embraced at a summit last year. The missile-defense project has already launched debate not only in Europe, but also in the Middle East as its primary target is seen as being Iran.
Turkish diplomats said Turkey was still pondering whether or not to participate to the project. The negotiations between Turkey and NATO include the project’s financial costs and whether a radar system would be hosted on Turkish soil.

New Mideast strategy

Medvedev’s statement was made all the more noteworthy because it came just ahead of U.S. President Barack Obama’s scheduled speech Thursday, in which he is expected to disclose Washington’s new Middle East strategy.
“He [Medvedev] is also posturing on the eve of President Obama’s policy speech on the Middle East, which is expected to underscore that Syria’s instability poses a risk for the whole region, making it incumbent on the regime to initiate reforms immediately, painful as they may be, for the sake of the unity of the country,” İdiz said. He added that this Russian stance is very much in line with the Turkish view on Syria.
“Obama sees an opportunity [in the speech] to sort of step back and assess what we’ve all witnessed,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday. “He’ll talk specifically about ways we can best support that positive change while focusing on our core principles: nonviolence, support for human rights and support for political and economic reform.”

On the eve of the Obama speech, U.S. envoys held meetings with regional countries to seek alignment in their policies. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met Wednesday with Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman on the recent unity deal between his Fatah party and rival Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with Obama on Friday.

In Ankara, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Francis J. Ricciardone met with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Tuesday to discuss the developments in the Middle East, with particular attention to Syria.
“We have just wanted to evaluate the developments in the Middle East,” Erdoğan told reporters Wednesday. He said that some delegations from the Middle East and North African countries would come to Turkey, without specifying which countries or when.