By KUNA,
MOSCOW : The Russian authorities acted on their word and expelled the representatives of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Wednesday.
The move came in answer to the ban fron NATO headquarters of two Russian diplomats on espionage charges.
Russia’s NATO Envoy Dmitry Rogozin meanwhile confirmed that Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov would not attend the NATO-Russian Federation meeting planned for mid May in Brussels.
The diplomat told a local paper this boycot is in answer of the diplomats’ expulsion as well as the NATO military maneuvers near the Russian-Georgia borders.
Ragozin accused parties, unnamed, of trying to abort efforts at improving Russia’s relations with NATO.
He further expressed a belief NATO has turned into an unstable organization whose next step could not be guessed at and was therefore incapable of establishing partnership relations with Russia, despite its heavy reliance on the federation on issues including Afghanistan.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer had expressed disappointment with Russia’s decision to forego the meeting in Brussels.
Vasily Chizhov and senior counselor Victor Korchakov were barred from NATO headquarters and their accreditations were withdrawn over “a spying scandal in Estonia.” NATO further requested that Belgian authorities declare the two “personae non gratae.” (end) as.wsa KUNA 061141 May 09NNNN