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Powell says Russia's NATO worries are groundless

Despite repeated assurances by US President George W. Bush, the Russians remain needlessly worried about the expansion of NATO closer to their border, US Secretary of State Colin Powell says.

The alliance, in weighing new weapons and deploying four F-16 fighters in the Baltics, is mounting a defense against "other new threats that are out there," Powell said Friday while flying home from a NATO meeting in Brussels, Belgium.

"We are not worried about the old threat of the Soviet Union," he said.

"And, my God, if I can say that, it is time that you guys start believing it."

Powell said he had spoken with Russian Foreign Minister Serge Lavrov about deploying the four F-16s to defend new NATO members, bringing the warplanes closer to Russian territory.

"The Russians would have preferred they not be deployed, but there was not massive reaction" from the government, although the Russian parliament, the Duma, criticized the move, Powell said.

He said his advice was "just take things in stride," and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who will be in Washington next week for talks, knows the Bush administration has no threatening intent.

In fact, Powell said, the US is reducing its troop presence in Europe and a review on deployment of nuclear weapons the administration has underway "is something we do all the time."

"So, if they look at what we are doing they know, as an analytical manner, that this is not something that they really should be worrying about," Powell said.

In Moscow, meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Russia did not fear the expansion of NATO or the EU.

But he acknowledged that Moscow has disputes with the EU and said NATO's eastward march would not improve international security.

After meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Putin said that because more than half of Russia's trade will be with the expanded EU, "We have spoken about how relations between the Russian Federation and the expanding European Union should be built."

"None of us wants modern Europe to be divided by new, and this case virtual, Berlin walls," Putin said.

"The question of how to find the path to this cooperation is not simple. We really did have -- and still have -- certain concerns. But dialogue is developing quite constructively at the moment."

Putin stressed that Russia's relations with NATO "are developing positively" despite any reservations that Russia has about NATO.

While he said that Russia has "no concerns about the expansion of NATO in terms of the security of the Russian Federation," he warned that "today's threats are such that the expansion of NATO will not remove them."
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