NATO tries to get Russia back to Afghanistan
Two decades after the Soviet Union’s humiliating retreat from Afghanistan, NATO is working to get Russia back into the country to help fight drug trafficking and rebuild Afghan security forces. The deal, championed by NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen as part of a “new start in the relationship between NATO and Russia,” would see Moscow providing helicopters to Afghan and NATO forces, training Afghan national-security forces and pilots, and helping on the ground with counternarcotics programs and border security. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is due to attend a NATO summit in Lisbon next month and sign the cooperation deal —and, in the process, repair relations damaged by years of NATO expansion and Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia.
That new start comes at a hefty price, though. In return for cooperation in Afghanistan, Moscow is asking for substantial concessions from NATO. A draft agreement on NATO-Russian cooperation penned by the Kremlin and released last December includes proposed restrictions on NATO deployment of any force bigger than a 3,000-strong brigade in the combined territory of all former Soviet bloc members. Russia is also demanding that NATO not attempt to station more than 24 aircraft in Eastern Europe for more than 42 days a year. Most controversially, Russia also has demanded veto power on any Western military deployments of large additional forces anywhere in Central Europe, the Balkans, or the Baltics. To top off the wish list, the Kremlin wants limits lifted on Russian troops in the breakaway enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia....
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That new start comes at a hefty price, though. In return for cooperation in Afghanistan, Moscow is asking for substantial concessions from NATO. A draft agreement on NATO-Russian cooperation penned by the Kremlin and released last December includes proposed restrictions on NATO deployment of any force bigger than a 3,000-strong brigade in the combined territory of all former Soviet bloc members. Russia is also demanding that NATO not attempt to station more than 24 aircraft in Eastern Europe for more than 42 days a year. Most controversially, Russia also has demanded veto power on any Western military deployments of large additional forces anywhere in Central Europe, the Balkans, or the Baltics. To top off the wish list, the Kremlin wants limits lifted on Russian troops in the breakaway enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia....