Nato divided on American call to punish Moscow

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Russia’s military walkover in Georgia has deepened Nato divisions as it prepares to find a new way next week of handling the resurgent former superpower.

Washington has called a meeting on Tuesday of Nato foreign ministers, essentially to punish Moscow for what the United States, Britain and, especially, East European countries see as a brutal invasion that reverted to Cold War methods.

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The trouble is that several big European states — notably France, Germany and Italy — do not see the Russian offensive that way. They partly blame Georgia, a would-be Nato member and a protégé of the United States. As Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister, told The Times: “Russia is a great nation. Look how we have been treating it.”

The Kremlin laughed off threats from President Bush this week that Moscow risked being cast back into the cold for cracking down on an upstart neighbour that for centuries was under Russian control. “I don’t know how they are going to isolate us,” Sergei Lavrov, the Foreign Minister, joked on Thursday, as Russians celebrated what they believe was a noble victory in saving South Ossetia from “Georgian aggression”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4543729.ece