Russia called on Monday for a new European-Atlantic security treaty embracing all countries and security organizations including NATO, the EU and post-Soviet bodies that would restore strategic parity.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the parity, which has long been the basis of strategic stability across the Atlantic, is becoming unbalanced because NATO has eclipsed the Cold War collective security system that has become dominated by the US.
Lavrov said in a speech on Saturday to the UN General Assembly that work on the new treaty could be started at a pan-European summit and include governments and organizations in the region.
He referred to it as “a kind of Helsinki-2,” a follow-up to the 1975 Helsinki Treaty.
That treaty between all European nations, together with the US and Canada, evolved into the present-day Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the largest conflict-prevention and security organization on the continent.
Elaborating on the proposal, first put forward in June by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Lavrov told a news conference that the OSCE principles, especially “the need to avoid any means to strengthen your own security at the expense of the security of others,” are no longer being followed.
He cited several examples of “strategic stability being strained” including Washington’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the US decision to install anti-missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic and the establishment of US bases in Bulgaria and Romania.
Lavrov said that “negotiations [for a strategic arms limitation treaty] are not so far heading anywhere because our US colleagues do not want to keep limits on the delivery vehicles and on nuclear warheads at storage. They only want to keep some limits on the operationally deployed nuclear warheads.”
EU MONITORS
Meanwhile, EU ceasefire monitors will for now not operate inside a security zone south of Georgia’s breakaway South Ossetia region but talks on access are continuing, Russia’s military said yesterday.
“From tomorrow, representatives of the European Union will begin conducting monitoring up to the southern borders of the security zone,” Vitaly Manushko, head of the temporary press center for the Russian peacekeeping force around South Ossetia, told reporters.
Under a French-brokered ceasefire deal, Russian troops stationed in Georgia since a brief war in August are to pull back from undisputed Georgian territory by Oct. 10, and allow EU monitors to take over duties patrolling the security zone.
Manushko said Russian and EU officials, meeting in the Georgian village of Karaleti yesterday, had not finalized a technical and logistical agreement that would have allowed the EU monitors to enter the security zone from today.
SUICIDE BOMB
In related news, a suicide car bomber blew himself up yesterday in Russia’s southern republic of Ingushetia in an apparent attempt to kill the region’s Interior Minister, police said.
Three bystanders and a motorist were wounded in the region’s main city of Nazran when the bomber blew up his Lada saloon as Interior Minister Mussa Medov and his bodyguards pulled alongside in their armored Mercedes, police said.
Medov and his bodyguards were not hurt, although their vehicle was severely damaged and a 2m crater was left in the road surface.
“It’s difficult right now to determine the comparative force of the explosion, but I’m certain it was no less than 2kg of explosive material,” an investigator at the blast site said.
Ingushetia is a poor, chiefly Muslim republic in a turbulent North Caucasus region where Moscow is struggling to contain an insurgency by Islamist militants who kill officials in ambushes and bombings.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS