Posted on 02/04/2009 12:26:26 PM PST by nickcarraway
Russia has embarked on a risky political game with new U.S. President Barack Obama by forcing its ally Kyrgyzstan to close a U.S. military base while keeping up overtures to establish warmer relations with Washington.
The Manas air base near the capital of the Central Asian state is a key supply centre for U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan, a campaign that Obama has set as a key priority.
Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev standing alongside Russia's Dmitry Medvedev at a news conference in Moscow, said on Tuesday he would close the base after securing a vital rescue package of over $2 billion from Russia.
The surprise move came in the middle of Medvedev's overtures to Obama aimed at raising bilateral ties from post-Cold War lows where they have languished since the days of former U.S. President George W. Bush.
"One could not have chosen a worst moment for such move," Alexei Malashenko of Carnegies Endowment for Peace think tank said.
Russian officials have said they received positive signals from Washington on key points of disagreement -- U.S. plans to station parts of a missile defence system in Eastern Europe and the issue of NATO membership for ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia.
Russian pressure on Kyrgyzstan to close Manas sits oddly since analysts have seen the NATO effort to defeat the Taliban as one of the few areas in which the interests of Washington and Moscow largely coincide.
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.reuters.com ...
I think im for J-V. Don’t see anything wrong with saying if a nation refuses to let citizens emmigrate freely, they don’t get MFN status.
Reagan and Scoop Jackson were solidly for this and i am too. About the only opposition to this is that Jews were the main beneficiaries, and of course, Jew haters dont like anything like that.
Good enough for Reagan, who supported the “refuseniks”, then good enough for me.
“Russia is the source and enabler of islamic jihad the world over.”
Except when it’s tried on their own soil, like Chechnya. Then they try to crush the jihad in their typically brutal and heavy-handed manner.
I call it “NIMBY Jihad.”
Or out-checkered, out-tiddley-winked, out-marbled, or even out-hopscotched.
No clue whatsoever.
I'd say he was never in the game.
As I said, Russia is the evil behind jihad, everywhere in there world, even in their own backyard. Basayev, the butcher of Beslan, was trained by the FSB and fought alongside the Russian Army in the early nineties in Georgia when the Russian barbarians first invaded and occupied Georgian land. Russia created the Chechen jihadists in the first place and unleashed them upon the Christian world.
When the Bolsheviks invaded Georgia in 1918, the Ossetians sided with the Boslheviks against independent Georgia.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Georgia became an independent nation. Russian "peacekeepers" did not occupy South Ossetia again until 1992.
The Ossetians supported the Bolsheviks before and now they are supporting the new Bolsheviks, KGB Putin and his neo-Soviet terrorist state.
Except for the fact that I don't want to sound like Chrissy Matthews... I'd say:HA!
Clever.
They're testing the new kid on the block that's all.
Don’t you know that Israel granted Russian citisens visa-free access last year?
http://en.rian.ru/world/20080320/101840804.html
“The Great Game” V.2 is afoot.
Russia has no restrictions on emigration now though.
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