The FINANCIAL — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads for Europe on August 18, for crisis talks with NATO allies on the situation in Georgia and to sign a key missile defense shield pact with Poland.
According to AFP, Rice confirmed she would travel from the meeting in Brussels to Warsaw to ink the deal on installing US interceptor missiles on Polish territory, a move sure to further inflame tensions with Russia.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Rice would be traveling "to Brussels, Belgium and Warsaw, Poland, departing on August 18."
"In Warsaw, Secretary Rice will sign a formal agreement with Poland on behalf of the United States for the establishment and operation of a ballistic missile defense interceptor site in Poland," McCormack said in a statement.
While in Brussels, Rice will also meet EU leadership "to include Foreign Minister of France Bernard Kouchner, European Union High Representative Javier Solana, and European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Fererro-Waldner," he said.
"We are going to help rebuild Georgia into a strong Georgian state," Rice told Fox News August 17.
Moscow was criticised by other Western leaders as it delayed implementing the terms of the EU-brokered ceasefire it signed on Saturday. It promised to begin the withdrawal of troops on August 18.
The Nato members that want to send the strongest-worded condemnation of Russian military action in Georgia are expected to underline the serious repercussions for the future if the alliance is seen to be ambivalent in confronting Moscow.
Recently Angela Merkel, German Chancellor made the comments backing up Georgia’s joining NATO while her visit to Tbilisi. She arrived in Georgia on August 17 as part of the EU's mediation efforts in the Georgian-Russian stand-off over the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It’s also worthwhile mentioning that several month ago on-the-record interventions and, especially, at off-the-record policy conferences, German and French officials laid out a whole collection of arguments against Membership Action Plans (MAPs) for Georgia and Ukraine at the upcoming NATO summit. As for today, before Merkel’s official statement about the necessity of Georgia’s joining NATO, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French Prezident shwed his support toward Georgia’s North-Atlantic long-term aspiration.
As NY Times reported, the cease-fire agreement now signed by Russia and Georgia was negotiated by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, in his role as president of the European Union. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, traveled to Tbilisi to offer her support to Georgia but continued to straddle the American position that Georgia be offered NATO membership soon and the European view that it should happen at some future time.
According to Press TV, the NATO allies supported Georgia in its military confrontation with Russia and the Caucasus nation stays on course to one day join their alliance – a prospect Russia strongly opposes.
Meanwhile, Russia's NATO envoy said it's time for Georgia to surrender its claim to the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, AP reported.
The 26 NATO ambassadors, at a meeting with the Georgian envoy to the alliance, reiterated its strong support for a sovereign, independent Georgia.
Britain is pushing to suspend security co-operation with Russia as its aggressive actions in Georgia expose deep divisions within NATO as to how Moscow should be punished.
According to Times Online, NATO foreign ministers are meeting for a special session on Georgia in Brussels tomorrow. Already there is disagreement between the United States and Britain on one side, which wants to take a tough approach, and Germany and France, which are urging a more cautious stance. They are likely to block attempts to send Nato military monitors into Georgia.
“We don’t want to leave the Russians out in the cold but we want to make it clear to Moscow that it’s no longer going to be business as usual,” one British diplomatic source said.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office confirmed last night that David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, will visit Georgia after the Nato meeting.
Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, said that Russia’s action had been adversarial and that Moscow appeared to be “heading back to its past”. He described its actions in Georgia as aggressive, Times Online reports.
According to Heraldsun, Moscow will review its relations with NATO after the alliance's "intolerable" reaction to Russia's military actions in Georgia, the Russian envoy to NATO said in an interview published on August 18.
Russia-NATO relations "will in any case be reviewed, because NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's statement that Russia used disproportionate force to protect its citizens, that we acted beyond the limits of self-defence, is utterly intolerable," NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin said in an interview with the official government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
