By Bernama
Moscow : Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to explain personally to his partners in the Russia-NATO Council his vision of the future relationship in this format and threats to the present-day world.
“A decision on Putin’s participation in the summit was not a simple one to take. However, the president clearly proceeds from the need for bringing personally to heads of state participating in the Council, our vision of the situation in the world, our appraisals and importance of cooperation between Russia and NATO,” a ranking representative of the presidential office told Russian news agency, Itar-Tass, Friday.
At the same time, he avoid to make a direct comparison of this speech with “the Munich speech” (distinguished for its straightforwardness and frankness), delivered by Putin at the conference on security problems in Munich in February 2007. The representative only said, “tonality of the speech will be restrained”.
Speaking of its content, the representative acknowledged that it is hardly possible for Putin to avoid the problem of a possible accession to the bloc by Georgia and Ukraine.
“It will be impossible to by-pass this topic; and we shall evidently say that an expansion is not prompted by the need, the more so, in the case of Ukraine where the population does not back accession to NATO,” he emphasised.
The Kremlin representative refused to assess chances that the Bucharest summit would take a decision on accession of the above countries to the bloc. He did not preclude a chance that if the summit does not grant the Membership Action Plan to Kiev and Tbilisi, the alliance will adopt a new format of backing their accession.
“They will possibly look for a mechanism of replacing the MAP with a format of expanded cooperation,” he claimed. “The difference is not great politically in this sense: this is not a flat challenge to Russia, but there is a legal difference,” the representative continued.
The Kremlin expert turned down a supposition that in response, Russia will link up an admission of Ukraine and Georgia with recognition of independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
“The president’s speech lacks these theses,” he said.
The Kremlin says the United States air defence system, Kosovo and the CFE Treaty as among other topics which are expected to be mentioned by the Russian leader in his speech.
“The topic of the air defence system will be dealt with in the speech,” the staff member of the president’s office said.
“The US could not reply positively to our proposals, though it replied to a certain extent to many of our concerns,” he acknowledged.
“Therefore, it was possible to avoid retaliatory moves; nevertheless, no progress was reached in this field,” he summed up.
“The president will also mention the problem of Kosovo,” the expert went on to say, adding “The ‘hot’ phase is still ahead there, and, I believe, they partially understand this.”
“We shall reiterate our position on the CFE Treaty,” the representative underlined.
“I don’t foresee an in-depth discussion on this point,” he added.