RUSSIA PUSHING NATO, CSTO COOPERATION

RIA Novosti
28.06.2005

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti military commentator Viktor Litovkin). Few people
noted the unusually optimistic conclusion to NATO General Secretary
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer’s recent official visit to Moscow.

Why the optimism if, as the Moscow media wrote, Scheffer got nothing
good from Moscow? But the NATO head was satisfied with the positive
development of relations with Russia, which he described as mature
partnership.

The only justification for this optimism can be the assistance that
the Kremlin offered to NATO in Central Asia. This will be a genuine
partnership that calls for mature relations between NATO and the
Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), comprising Russia,
Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

In Moscow Scheffer was briefed on terrorist bases and increased
production of narcotics in Afghanistan, problems of concern to both
NATO and the CSTO. Coordinated efforts could make NATO’s operations
in the region much easier.

In addition, President Vladimir Putin offered Scheffer a pilot
project to train narcotics specialists for Afghanistan and Central
Asia. Russia and its partners have more experience and capabilities
in the area than NATO. In short, this is about a real contribution
to the war on terror and drugs in the region.

Scheffer promised to relay the Russian offer to NATO headquarters in
Brussels. If other partners agree, the bloc would join in this effort,
he said. Does this mean that the Russia-NATO partnership in the joint
war against terrorism has exceeded all expectations?

Some achievements have been made. Moscow has granted NATO transport
corridors to deliver troops and cargoes to bases in Central Asia
and Afghanistan for operations to stabilize the region, and has also
shared vital intelligence information on the situation in Afghanistan’s
provinces and paramilitary groups there.

This intelligence information continues to grow, in particular about
terrorist-training bases in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan and
secret terrorist channels into Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
The terrorists’ aims are to destabilize both the region and other
areas. The Kremlin also provided information about the production
and delivery of drugs from Afghanistan, although we have yet to see
any produced positive results.

“Terrorists are trained in Afghanistan and adjacent Pakistan by the
Taliban and teachers who train them for terrorist acts in Russia,”
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a meeting with Scheffer. “Our
information shows that these people are periodically infiltrated into
the Ferghana Valley.”

But the leaders of NATO’s anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan
appear not to notice this. Is it because they focused their attention
on democratic elections in the provinces, thus neglecting the main
goal of the operation?

Russia-NATO cooperation includes regular meetings and political
consultations within the Russia-NATO Council, practical work of
joint anti-terrorism groups and combat compatibility, and even joint
command post exercises (CPX) on land and sea. The sides have also held
CPXs to check the effectiveness of air defense and theater missile
defense systems. Russian warships participated in NATO exercises in
the Mediterranean on combatting illegal migration and movement of
terrorists, drugs and weapons of mass destruction.

But careful analysis of these achievements shows that the situation is
not as positive as the NATO leadership tries to make out. Cooperation
programs alone cannot remove Moscow’s concerns on several key issues.

For example, Moscow is seriously worried over the presence of U.S.
tactical nuclear weapons at NATO bases in Europe. Robin Cook,
the former foreign secretary of Britain, and the former Pentagon
chief Robert McNamara wrote about this in the Financial Times the
other day. The U.S. has some 150 to 500 B61 nuclear free-fall bombs
in Europe.

“Against what terrorists can these weapons be used?” I asked Scheffer,
who at first said he did not know what weapons I meant. But then he
described them as political deterrents that would not be used against
anyone. Why then keep this relic of the Cold War in Europe, which
NATO prefers not to notice, as the answer of its general secretary
demonstrated?