Five days later NATO dispatched the first of five AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control Systems) surveillance planes to police the skies over the United States as Washington dispatched its AWACS to the skies over Afghanistan.

According to the Financial Times, a big-business daily based in London, diplomats from Turkey--under the banner of fighting terrorism--called for invoking Article 5 to use against Kurdish groups fighting for their national self-determination. The Spanish imperialist government also wants to use the article in its campaign to try to break the Basque independence movement.

Robertson told the NATO meeting, "The logic of enlargement remains as compelling today as it was on September 10, 2001." The meeting was held in Prague as part of the process of expanding the U.S.-dominated military alliance eastward to include 10 Central and Eastern European countries,

Robertson "raised eyebrows among summit participants," said Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation, by calling Afghanistan a "black hole" that became a "safe haven for terrorists." The NATO chief added, "That's why NATO is engaged in southeast Europe, to prevent such 'black holes' from emerging on our doorstep."

U.S. president George Bush sent a message to the meeting that read, in part, "The United States supports NATO membership for all of Europe's new democracies, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, who share our values and are ready to contribute to security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter administration, gave the keynote address to the meeting. He warned the Russian government that "integration into the Euro-Atlantic zone is the only geopolitical choice left to Russia" because "it is surrounded by 290 million Muslims in the south, and there will be 450 million Muslims in the immediate Russian periphery by 2020. There [are] also 1.2 billion Chinese in Russia's East," he said. "If Russia hasn't decided whether to make a rapprochement with NATO a tactical move or a strategic choice, we need to convince it that it should be a strategic choice."

U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told a recent meeting of the U.S.-Russia Business Council that Washington wanted to "see this relationship broaden beyond the security and strategic relationship" to include economic and business cooperation. According to the AFP news agency, Rice also said that Russia needed to streamline its legal system and create the right conditions for foreign investment--code words for taking demonstrative steps to try to reimpose capitalist social relations.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home