|
Russia cancels military exercise with US
MOSCOW : Joint Russian-US military exercises scheduled to take place in western Russia later this month have been cancelled due to questions about the "status" of US military personnel. "The reason is that the question of the status of American personnel being sent to take part in the exercises has not been resolved," Interfax quoted an unnamed senior Russian defense ministry official as saying. The exercises involving middle-ranking officers from both countries had been due to take place in the Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow, in the second half of September, he said Tuesday. A spokesman for the defence ministry would not confirm or deny the report. The US embassy in Moscow said it had no immediate comment. The official quoted by Interfax did not give details about the status problem, but also referred to a series of protests by Communists who said that US troops should not be allowed on Russian soil because of US foreign policy. "Emotions being raised over these manoeuvres by certain political forces do not match the scope of the planned exercises," the official said. The Russian Communist Party had demanded the cancellation of the exercises, threatening to demonstrate across the country on September 14. "The Communists oppose sabre-rattling on our soil by the army that bombed the sovereign Yugoslavia, trampled the statehood of several countries in the Middle East, and is trying by hook or by crook to perpetuate its military presence in the territory of the former Soviet Union," a communist resolution stated Tuesday, Interfax reported. Russian-US military exercises have been held periodically since the early 1990s, with manoeuvres in 2004 and 2005 dubbed Torgau, after the name of the German town where Soviet and US troops linked up in the last days of World War II. Borsch why does it hate us? Posted by: RD 2006-09-05 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=165090 |