PRESS RELEASE
Russia's Rogozin Warns NATO Expansion Could Lead to War Between U.S. and Russia in Georgia
April 1, 2008 (EIRNS)—Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, warned in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda in Brussels yesterday evening, that Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili's current policy of embroiling NATO in his domestic political problems could lead to war between the United States and Russia. "Saakashvili only wants to pull the alliance by the ear and use this military machine to resolve his territorial problems. But this is to announce war! How could we fail to react!," Rogozin added, saying that "one provocation along Abkhazia and South Ossetian border would be enough for Russia and the United States to be admiring each other through the sights of their automatic weapons."
Rogozin also said that if Ukraine and Georgia were granted Membership Action Plan (MAP) status, a first step toward joining the alliance, "I can imagine our President's reaction.... On the whole, I strongly doubt that in such a situation we will have anything further to talk about with other alliance members." Rogozin stressed that NATO's further expansion eastward would "destroy all the mechanisms that have up to now, with such difficulty, been built to normalize relations in the security sphere."
"The alliance, of course, can acquire a stump of Georgia without Abkhazia and South Ossetia and a completely politically defunct Ukraine, but in the process it will lose Russia for long-long years to come."
