Nato tells Russia: no ‘new line’ in Europe

Source: FT.com

Nato warned Russia on Tuesday that it could not draw a “new line” in Europe preventing Georgia and other countries from joining the western military alliance if they wished to do so.

Meeting in emergency session in Brussels, the western military alliance’s 26 foreign ministers also suspended regular top-level ties with Russia, saying that “business as usual” could not continue while Russian troops remained in Georgia.

Expressing their strong support for Georgia’s independence in one of the most serious disputes between the west and Russia since the end of the cold war, Nato members agreed to establish a permanent commission with the embattled Caucasian country, which is desperate to join the western alliance.

Nato is also sending 15 civil emergency experts to Georgia to ease conditions for an estimated 150,000 refugees.

Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, insisted that Moscow could not divide those countries that had already entered Nato from those that still aspired to do so.

“There will absolutely be no new line. Nato does not accept that there is a new line, and we are acting as if there is no new line,” she said, evoking the Iron Curtain that divided Nato from the Soviet bloc during the cold war.

“Nato intends to support the territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty of Georgia and to support its democratically-elected government, and to deny Russia the strategic objective of undermining that democracy and making Georgia weaker,” she said.

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