NATO Brinksmanship Pushes the Caucasus Closer to the Edge
Andrew E Kramer, New York Times
August 28, 2008
MOSCOW–Russian commanders said yesterday they were growing alarmed at the number of NATO warships sailing into the Black Sea, conceding NATO vessels now outnumbered their fleet’s ships anchored off Georgia’s western coast.
As attention turned to the balance of naval power in the sea, the leader of the separatist region of Abkhazia said he would invite Russia to establish a naval base at his territory’s deep-water port of Sukhumi.
And, in a move certain to anger Russia, Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yushchenko, said he would open negotiations with authorities in Moscow to raise the rent on the Russian naval base at Sevastopol, which is in Ukraine’s predominantly Russian province of Crimea.
Russia has said any renegotiation would break a 1997 agreement between the two countries, under which it currently leases the base for $98 million a year until 2017.
The deputy head of Russia’s General Staff told a news briefing Moscow was sticking strictly to the current agreement, and accused NATO states of “ratcheting up tension” in the Black Sea by increasing their presence there.
To illustrate to the Russians they do not fully control Georgia’s airspace or coastline, the United States is pursuing a delicate policy of delivering humanitarian aid on military transport planes and ships,
The policy has left American and Russian naval vessels manoeuvring in close proximity off the western coast of Georgia, with the Americans concentrated near the southern port of Batumi and the Russians around the central port of Poti. It has also left the Kremlin deeply suspicious of American motives.
“What the Americans call humanitarian cargoes – of course, they are bringing in weapons,” the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, told the BBC Tuesday, adding: “We’re not trying to prevent it.”
The White House dismissed all assertions that the Pentagon is shipping weapons under the “guise” of humanitarian aid, calling the comments “ridiculous.”
It was unclear yesterday how many NATO ships were currently in the Black Sea.
A spokesperson at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe, in Mons, Belgium, said there were four NATO warships there on a previously scheduled exercise called Active Endeavour, for training in anti-terrorist and anti-pirate manoeuvres. But he cautioned that other NATO countries could have ships in the sea not operating under NATO command.
“Obviously, there are other NATO-affiliated nations out doing things,” Lt. Col. Web Wright, the spokesperson, said. “But I can’t speak for those nations.”
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