От Гришa
К Василий Фофанов
Дата 24.11.2001 21:46:35
Рубрики Современность; Политек;

Из NY Times

But in an apparent effort to ease concerns that the plan might give Russia a free hand to block NATO actions, the secretary general, Lord Robertson, stressed that Mr. Putin was not seeking either full NATO membership for Russia or a veto over major decisions

Left unanswered, to the consternation of both NATO bureaucrats and diplomats, was whether Russia could really gain an equal voice in NATO discussions without the ultimate tool given other members ≈ a veto of proposals it cannot accept.

Asked on Thursday about the prospect that Russia might gain a veto on some issues in the proposed new council, Lord Robertson told the Reuters news agency, "That's one of the implications.

"It would depend on the subject matter as well," he was quoted as saying, "but we're not at that stage yet. We're exploring it, and that is one of the implications that would have to be weighed."

That drew a quick reaction from some quarters. The Financial Times of London quoted unnamed diplomatic sources today as insisting that Mr. Blair's proposal precluded a Russian veto, and that the very concept would undermine the relationship between the alliance and Russia.

After his Kremlin meeting today, Lord Robertson told reporters that Mr. Putin had assured him that Russian involvement in NATO deliberations was not a ploy to "slow down or neutralize the work that NATO does. Nor was it a way in which Russia would seek to have a veto on what NATO was doing," he said.

Today the top Russian policy official in the Clinton administration's State Department, Steven Sestanovich, said NATO's current relationship with Russia, in which the Kremlin was informed of most NATO policies after the fact, clearly was outmoded. But giving Russia a veto in NATO deliberations, he said, was "a bridge too far."

"It's troublesome enough within NATO that every member has a veto, but there is at least the presumption of a common approach, because we're all members of the alliance," Mr. Sestanovich, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview. "To create such an arrangement and then discover the real purpose of the Russians is to tie NATO in knots isn't going to help anybody."