President
rejects claims Russia is a principal foe, saying actions in Ukraine an
expression of vulnerability rather than strength
theguardian.com,
Julian Borger in The Hague, Tuesday 25
March 2014
 |
| The US president, Barack Obama, in The Hague at the nuclear security summit. Photograph: Robin Van Lonkhuijsen/AFP/Getty Images |
President
Barack Obama has described Russia as no more than a "regional power"
whose actions in Ukraine are an expression of weakness rather than strength, as
he restated the threat from the G7 western allies and Japan that they would
inflict much broader sanctions if Vladimir Putin went beyond annexation of
Crimea and moved troops into eastern Ukraine.
Speaking at
the end of a summit on nuclear security in The Hague, Obama rejected the
suggestion made by Mitt Romney – his Republican challenger in the last
president election – that Russia was the United States' principal geopolitical
foe. The president said he was considerably more concerned about the threat of
a terrorist nuclear bomb attack on New York.
He said
that the US was committed to the defence of its Nato allies but that for
non-member states along Russia's borders, Washington and the rest of the
international community would use non-military pressure to counter Russian
encroachment.
Obama said
he would not guess at Putin's motivation, but his remarks appeared to confront
one of the apparent aims behind the Russian leader's actions so far in Crimea –
to restore the superpower status and prestige Moscow once enjoyed as the
capital of the Soviet Union.
"Russia
is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbours, not
out of strength but out of weakness," the president said. The US also has
influence over its neighbours, he added, but: "We generally don't need to
invade them in order to have a strong cooperative relationship with them.
"The
fact that Russia felt it had to go in militarily and lay bare these violations
of international law indicates less influence, not more," Obama said.
"Russian
actions are a problem. They don't pose the number one security threat to the
United States. I remain much more concerned about the prospect of a nuclear
weapon going off in Manhattan," the president said, pointing out that was
why he had begun a series of bi-annual summits aimed at improving the security
of weapons-grade fissile material stocks around the world.
At this
week's summit in The Hague, the third in the series, 35 countries agreed to
abide by a set of international standards governing security at nuclear sites
and accept international inspections of their security arrangements. However,
Russia and China were among the 18 countries at the summit that did not sign
the agreement, a reflection of how old Cold War era divisions remained, and
have deepened with the Ukraine crisis. China has remained neutral over Russia's
annexation of Crimea, abstaining in a UN Security Council vote and refusing to
respond to western invitations to join international condemnation of the move.
In his
remarks in The Hague, Obama said that he did not think that the Russian
leadership, which has massed troops on Ukraine's eastern border, had made a
decision yet over whether to invade that part of the country.
"If
they stay on Russian soil, they pose what appears to be an effort of
intimidation, but Russia has the right legally to have its troops on its own
soil. I don't think it's a done deal," the president said. He added that
he thought Moscow was "making a series of calculations" and that
those calculations would be affected by how the US and the international
community respond.
He
adamantly rejected Russian justification for the invasion and annexation of
Crimea on the grounds that Russian speakers were under threat, and rejected
Moscow's comparisons to Kosovo, whose declaration of independence – a decade
after the start of a Serbian campaign of ethnic cleansing of its
ethnic-Albanian majority – was recognised by western capitals.
"There
has been no evidence that Russian speakers have been in any way
threatened," Obama said. "When I hear analogies to Kosovo, where you
had thousands of people who were being slaughtered by their government, it's a
comparison that makes absolutely no sense." "I think it is important
for everybody to be clear and strip away some of the possible excuses for
potential Russian action."
The
president acknowledged that the broad sanctions on the energy, finance, and
arms-export sectors of the Russian economy, threatened by the G7 in the event
of further territorial expansion by Moscow, would also have an impact on the
West, but he vowed that the impact on Russia would be far worst.
Related Articles:
Nuclear security summit comes to a close, with joint declaration
 |
| The official group portrait. Photo: NSS2014 |
.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.