Posted on 05/31/2007 10:38:46 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
MOSCOW (AFP) - President Vladimir Putin issued an acerbic warning Thursday to the United States, saying the recent test of a new Russian missile was a direct response to US actions and condemning "imperialism" in world affairs.
"Our American partners have quit the ABM Treaty," Putin told reporters after meeting his Greek counterpart, referring to the landmark 1972 US-Soviet treaty limiting the missile defenses of the Cold War superpower foes.
"We warned them then that we would come out with a response to maintain the strategic balance in the world. Yesterday we conducted a test of a new strategic ballistic missile with multiple warheads, and of a new cruise missile, and will continue to improve our resources."
The United States informed Russia in 2001 that it was exercising its option to withdraw unilaterally from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) pact. It has since stepped up controversial plans, fiercely opposed by Russia, to deploy a missile defence shield in eastern Europe.
Putin warned Wednesday that the US missile defense plan would turn Europe into a "powder keg" and he repeated on Thursday previous assertions that the planned deployments would ignite a new Cold War-style arms buildup.
"We are not the initiators of this new round of the arms race," Putin said.
The Russian president's comments came a week before he meets US President George W. Bush and other leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations at a summit in Germany.
He is also scheduled to hold one-on-one talks with Bush in the United States at the beginning of July.
In a thinly disguised attack on US foreign policy in recent years, Putin warned there had been attempts by actors -- he did not name any country or bloc explicitly -- in international affairs to impose their will on others.
"In our view, it is nothing other than diktat, than imperialism," the Russian leader stated.
"Problems have arisen because the world changed and there was an attempt to make it unipolar. There was a desire among several international actors to dictate their will to each and everyone and to act not in accordance with the norms of international life and law," Putin said.
He added: "This is very dangerous and unhealthy. The norms of international law have been altered for political expediency. What is this political expediency and who defines it?"
Tensions between Russia and the United States have risen dramatically in the past year amid sharpening differences over the US missile plans, the state of democracy in Russia and concerns over energy supplies.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice repeated on Wednesday the US assertion that the planned missile defense system in eastern Europe poses no threat to Russia and that Moscow's concern over it is "ludicrous."
Her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, countered at a meeting of G8 foreign ministers outside Berlin that "there is nothing ludicrous about this issue because the arms race is starting again."
Well perhaps we could go back in time and choose not to supply the Soviets with everything they couldn’t supply themselves. We of course would need to do so in German.
It’s the same ABM treaty that the Russians violated before the ink was dry.
I wish Bush would have the stones to tell Putin, eye to eye, to go pound sand when he meets with him in Kennebunkport in July. Of course, Putin would have to stand on a pile of Manhattan telephone books.
Yup. That's the one...and that went out-of-effect the moment that the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Now repeal the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and open the Land Office.
amen !!
Vlad Putin is just another Russian commie trying to look like a hero to the other commies.
The Lend-Lease was not only to England, but to Russia. Fighter planes were built in the US, flown to Fairbanks, Russian pilots taking over there, and flown directly into combat on the front lines. Fairbanks was European Theater.
Nanny says.."Putie-Pooh needs time out in the Naughty chair.."
sw
Thanks!
lend-lease
http://www.answers.com/topic/lend-lease
System promulgated by Pres. Franklin Roosevelt to give aid to U.S. allies in World War II. Faced with Britain’s inability to pay cash for war materials and food, as required by U.S. law, Roosevelt asked Congress to allow repayment “in kind or property” from countries vital to U.S. defense. The Lend-Lease Act was passed in March 1941, despite arguments that it led the U.S. closer to war. Much of the $49 billion in aid went to British Commonwealth countries; the Soviet Union, China, and 40 other countries also received assistance. U.S. troops stationed abroad received about $8 billion in aid from the Allies.
Good heavens -- are you kidding me?
Tom Kean? Geraldine Ferraro? RICHARD EFFIN' GERE?!?
WTF?
The Lend-Lease Act
http://uboat.net/allies/documents/lend-lease.htm
In September 1940, President Roosevelt negotiated the famous destroyer-for-bases agreement under which 50 obsolete “four-pipers” US WWI destroyers were exchanged for 99-year lease of several British bases in the Western Hemisphere. This was rationalized that these bases might one day become critical to US defences.
The Lend-Lease Act is born
The Lend-Lease Act was approved in March 11, 1941 by the Congress. This act gave President Roosevelt almost unlimited freedom in directing supplies, tanks, aircraft and ammunition to the war effort in Europe without sacrificing US neutrality at that time. One of the aspects of the Lend Lease Act were SAM ships, Liberty ships lent to Britain.
When the war had ended the Lend-Lease programme had extended over $41 billion in aid to more than 40 nations (some sources say the aid was as high as $50 billion). Britiain got the biggest share or roughly $30 billion and the Soviets about $11 billion. China got $1 billion.
Less than $10 billion of that aid was ever repaid, making this appear more like the donation and support it really was.
Lend-Lease assistance to the USSR
Lend-Lease was the most visible sign of wartime cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. About $11 billion in war matériel was sent to the Soviet Union under that program. The program started 3 months after the German invasion of USSR in June, 1941.
Additional assistance came from U.S. Russian War Relief (a private, nonprofit organization) and the Red Cross. About seventy percent of the aid reached the Soviet Union via the Persian Gulf through Iran; the remainder went across the Pacific to Vladivostok and across the North Atlantic to Murmansk. Lend- Lease to the Soviet Union officially ended in September 1945.
Joseph Stalin never revealed to his own people the full contributions of Lend-Lease to their country’s survival, but he referred to the program at the 1945 Yalta Conference saying, “Lend-Lease is one of Franklin Roosevelt’s most remarkable and vital achievements in the formation of the anti-Hitler alliance.”
Lend-Lease matériel was welcomed by the Soviet Union, and President Roosevelt attached the highest priority to using it to keep the Soviet Union in the war against Germany. Lend-Lease helped the Soviet Union push the Germans out of its territory and Eastern Europe, thus accelerating the end of the war. With Stalin’s takeover of Eastern Europe, the wartime alliance ended, and the Cold War began.
Yes, much to my chagrin.
Too many Republicans are just too clueless for their own good.
It's bad enough that they tried this. It's even worse that it worked -- and that so many of these jack@sses ended up in positions of power in Republican administrations.
I should clarify: The administrations which hired/appointed the Leftists are the clueless ones. I agree with you that the closet Socialists know exactly what they're doing.
Sorry, I gotta side with the Ruskies on this one.
Russia has been attacked many times in history by her neighbours on or near her western border (Poland, Germany, France, Sweden, etc.) - and she (Russia) has always been nervous and suspicious of her western neighbours intentions.
Now we want to install a "missle defence" system in Russia's western neighbours near the Russian border.
C'mon, would you want China to install and man a missle defence system in Mexico, Canada and/or Cuba near America's borders??????????..
If we were Ruskies, we'd like to do what Putin has done except we'd never get Congress to agree on anything - so nothing would get done.
Oh, I see — you’re right.
Didn't see those names. Just the major heavies. The late Caspar Weinberger, Frank Gaffney, Kenneth Adelmann, etc. The anti-communist hard-cores of the Reagan Administration.
As for the three nobodies you focussed on, excepting Ferraro, what makes you think they are the celebs you assume? Anyways, they are hardly Michael Moore Move-On.org radicals.
Or why many of these same folks were among the few so-called Republicans who openly supported Bill Clinton's military campaign in the Balkans in 1999 -- ostensibly to help what has turned out to be a radical Islamic element in Kosovo?
In 1939 the Russians and the Germans were close friends while they were both carving up Poland. It was only after one brutal dictator stabbed the other in the back did the Russians come crying to US.
Each passing day demonstrates Putin's 'inner KGB'.
LOL - we lost 500,000 Russians lost 21,000,000 some savings.==
Recent publications told us that Soviets (not Russians) lost about 11 mlns during ww2. Lesser then 21 but still too much The ferocity of battles on the Estern Front was much much higher then on the West..
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