Posted on 02/22/2008 12:14:12 PM PST by processing please hold
MOSCOW - Russia's envoy to NATO warned the alliance Friday against overstepping its mandate in Kosovo and said Moscow might be forced to use "brute military force" to maintain respect on the world scene.
Dmitry Rogozin said the Russian military also might get involved if all European Union nations recognize Kosovo's independence without United Nations agreement and despite strong objections from Russia and Serbia.
The comments were the latest harsh rhetoric from Moscow protesting Kosovo's declaration of independence, which has sparked violent protests in Serbia and international disagreement over whether to recognize the fledgling nation.
The comments also sparked quick reaction from the U.S. State Department, which urged Russia to repudiate them.
Rogozin couched his threat, however, assuring that Russia was not currently making plans for a military confrontation.
"If the European Union works out a single position or NATO goes beyond its current mandate in Kosovo, these organizations will conflict with the United Nations," Rogozin said in a televised hookup from NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
If that happens, Russia "will proceed from the assumption that to be respected, we have to use brute military force," he said.
The U.S. ambassador to NATO, meanwhile, said Washington was "very disappointed" by Russia's hostility over Kosovo, and Nicholas Burns, the U.S. State Dept.'s third-ranking official, called Rogozin's statement "highly irresponsible."
"This cynical and ahistorical comment by the Russian ambassador should be repudiated by his own government," Burns said responding to questions in an online discussion.
Later, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Russia's envoy to the European Union, used a more conciliatory tone, saying the Kosovo problem should be resolved exclusively by political means.
Rogozin - an outspoken nationalist known for his tough rhetoric - told NATO that its 16,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo must "remain neutral" over the contentious declaration.
"Under no circumstances should the alliance get involved in politics," Rogozin said. However, Moscow already was alarmed by reports that authorities in Kosovo had closed the border with Serbia.
Local authorities patrol Kosovo's borders, but the main responsibility for security lies with NATO peacekeepers. On Friday, they sent back several busloads of Serbs seeking to join a rally in the Kosovo Serb stronghold of Kosovska Mitrovica.
Russia has staunchly supported Serbia's to Kosovo's secession, and has vowed to block any efforts in the United Nations to recognize its independence.
In what appeared to be a contradictory comment, Rogozin assured that "Russia was not planning to get involved in any armed confrontation over Kosovo."
"There will be no war between Russia and NATO over Kosovo," he said, though the Kosovo issue "will certainly hamper our dialogue."
Nations that recognized Kosovo's statehood had made "a strategic mistake, similar to the invasion of Iraq," he said.
Other Russian officials have called the recognition illegal and said it could effectively split Kosovo in half. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that Kosovo's secession could lead to regional instability.
More than a dozen nations have recognized Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia, including the United States, Britain, France and Germany. Russia has been joined in its opposition by China and others, including EU member Spain.
Rogozin called the violent protests that took place Thursday in the Serbian capital "national wrath that will be hard to curb," and criticized the West for making "a step toward a very cruel and emotional ethnic conflict" in the Balkans.
Predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo - which has been governed by a U.N. mission and patrolled by NATO peacekeepers since 1999 - had been widely expected to declare independence from Serbia after internationally mediated talks on its future fell apart last year.
AMEN brother.
“Maybe Russia will back off if we just do whatever Russia demands? Maybe if we just do whatever Russia says, whenever they say it, then do you think they might let us be their friends?”
Some have argued that adopting the Bush policy of groveling before the Wahabists just might work with the Russians...at least as well as it has worked with the Saudis. As for me, I’d rather have Russians calling the shots than Saudi Mohammedans if that’s the choice. My people have long experience living under Mohammedanism. You wouldn’t like it.
Yea. Wait till Obama, (AKA, America’s Neville Chamberlain)
gets in office. He wants to make PEACE with our enemies.
BARF.
“It is a crying shame that Russia is the only country with the guts to defend their Christian brothers in Serbia.”
Maybe Holy Russia didn’t die in 1917.
It didn’t.
(not in my opinion)
Gas in our town has finally risen to over $3.00 a gallon. Hubby has a gas sucking work truck. If it gets really bad, he can get a moped and pull his tools in a little red wagon.
What will the Russians do? I don't know. To me they hold the bargaining chips.
Our alliance with the Saudis is to counter Russia’s alliance with the jihadist ayatollah pigs. We pit the Sunnis and Shiites against each other. Divide et Impera! The alternative is that all the muslims would be united as Russian allies against us.
In essence and in political double speak---we told Russia to stop f'ing us around the world causing us headaches or we'll cause you trouble in your own backyard. That was what was meant in my post.
It looks the other way around from the article.
The comments also sparked quick reaction from the U.S. State Department, which urged Russia to repudiate them.
Rogozin couched his threat, however, assuring that Russia was not currently making plans for a military confrontation.
If I live to be a million years old I'll never understand Bush and his ROP mantra when it comes to islam. They have sworn to kill infidels, I'm included in that by the way, and yet he keeps referring to them that way. Well, he just gave them their very own country in Europe to spread the caliphate.
Yup, they hold lots of chips.
And I don’t trust the Russians one bit.
It irks me that they are in the right in this mess and we are in the wrong.
Sure we are FAR FAR superior to Russia in conventional arms and could easily clean their clock in a conventional confrontation...we are so technically superior it would be as though they were unarmed.
But we cannot risk ANY confrontation with them at all.
Blowing their soldiers away with our superior arms would just make them angry beyond description and raise calls for them to resort to nuclear brinkmanship. And we are NOT equally matched in that arena... they are much more prepared to protect their civilian population than we are... our population is naked and defenseless.
Poke the Russian bear with a stick hard enough and he may become suicidally angry.
You are kidding me. Are you really that stupid?
How the hell does George Bush have anything to do with a EU policy that was signed on to by the Clinton Administration?
The breakup of Yugoslavia was strictly an EU/Clinton affair, Kosovo is just another piece of the pie.
There I fixed that for you.
Wouldn't it make more sense for us and the Russians to ally against the Muzzies rather than for us to ally with the Sunni's and Russia with the Shiites.
...oh, and before signing out, i want to extend a tip of the fedora to Jimmmy Carter without whom today's mess would never have been possible.
That’s not an option. Wishing doesn’t make it so.
Go Putin.
...to Hell.
No in this situation I am rooting for him. Sorry.
” “Then we should all get down on our knees and thank God that no Americans need to die for the EU’s and Bill Clinton’s dog vomit Mohammedan Albanians in Kosovo anytime soon.”
There I fixed that for you.”
8 years of Bush’s America disgracing groveling before the Saudis, hundreds of millions spent supporting Mohammedan terrorists with hundreds of millions more promised and you call those “people” in Kosovo Bill Clinton’s Mohammedan Albanians???????????????????????? No wonder the ruling clique of the Republican party is about to be thrown on the trash heap of history, marching in lock step behind that man Bush right over a cliff!
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