NATO, Russia look headed for conflict
When NATO holds its summit this May in Chicago, there will not be the customary additional summit with Russia. Differences over NATO's missile shield plans have put dialogue and cooperation temporarily on hold.
Leaders in Moscow and Brussels carefully chose their words this week to downplay what is a clear impasse. "The dialogue continues, and no doors are being closed," outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told reporters on Friday, March 23. Medvedev was referring to the announcement the previous day by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen that the bloc would not be meeting with Russia when it convenes in Chicago in May.
The official reason given was difficulty in accommodating the schedule of future Russian President Vladimir Putin. But earlier Rasmussen had said a NATO-Russia summit would only take place if the two sides could reach agreement on NATO's planned missile defense system in Europe, which Moscow stiffly opposes. Experts say the real reason NATO and Russia won't be talking has nothing to do with full calendars.
"It's no surprise since NATO and Russia couldn't come together on the missile shield issue," Alexander Rahr, the Russia expert at the German Society for Foreign Policy in Berlin, told DW. "Putin's only option would have been simply to nod in assent to the Western decision." That would have been an unacceptable foreign policy humiliation for prestige-conscious Putin. The question is: Where do things go from here?
http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,15830134,00.html
