NATO Freezes Russian Ties Over Georgia

[babsbunny]

http://www.truthout.org/article/nato-freezes-russian-ties-over-georgia

Tuesday 19 August 2008

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by: Mark John and Francois Murphy, Reuters

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Under pressure from the US, NATO has frozen contacts with Russia. (Photo: AP)

Brussels - NATO agreed after U.S. pressure on Tuesday to freeze regular contacts with Russia until Moscow had withdrawn its troops from Georgia in line with a peace deal.

The alliance also agreed to upgrade contacts with Tbilisi but stopped short of accelerating its efforts to join NATO, an ambition which had enraged Russia even before the two-week-old conflict over Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region.

"We have determined that we cannot continue with business as usual," the 26 NATO states said in a joint declaration issued after emergency talks in Brussels.

The statement did not explicitly refer to a U.S. demand to suspend contacts within the six-year-old NATO-Russia Council (NRC), but NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said it was clear such contacts could not take place at present.

"As long as Russian forces are basically occupying a large part of Georgia I cannot see a NATO-Russia Council convening at whatever level," he told a news conference.

[Union Thug]

1. NATO needs to be dissolved...

It's evolved into the hitman for the Godfather of imperialist nations.

[Union Thug]

2. self delete duplicate