File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1998/deleuze-guattari.9812, message 346


Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 23:59:44 -0500 (EST)
From: cd <cw_duff-AT-alcor.concordia.ca>
Subject: russia_iraq_2.html 


   Yahoo! News AP Headlines
  
   Thursday December 17 7:22 PM ET
  
Yeltsin Condemns Strikes on Iraq
  
   By BARRY RENFREW Associated Press Writer
  
   MOSCOW (AP) - President Boris Yeltsin denounced the United States and
   Britain on Thursday for attacking Iraq and demanded an immediate end
   to the bombing, warning it could shatter hopes of peace in the Middle
   East. Russia then recalled its ambassador to the United States in
   protest.
  
   ``Russia demands an immediate end to military action, to show common
   sense and restraint and not to allow further escalation of the
   conflict which could result in the most dramatic consequences not only
   for the Iraqi settlement but for the stability of the entire region,''
   Yeltsin said in a statement.
  
   The U.S. State Department said Ambassador Yuli M. Vorontsov was flying
   home to Moscow for ``consultations.''
  
   President Clinton was expected to telephone Yeltsin on Friday in
   another effort to persuade him to back the United States on the
   attack. Vice President Al Gore called Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny
   Primakov on Thursday with the same appeal.
  
   In that conversation, Primakov expressed Russia's indignation at the
   attacks, the Interfax news agency cited the government press service
   as saying. Primakov has had close ties with Iraq for many years.
  
   The United States and Britain launched air and missile attacks against
   Iraq in response to Saddam Hussein's continued defiance of U.N.
   weapons inspectors.
  
   The Russian General Staff ordered the navy and air force to put some
   of its units in ``a state of preparedness'' to await orders that the
   commander-in-chief might issue because of the attacks, the ITAR-Tass
   news agency reported. It did not elaborate, and there was no sign that
   Russia was preparing to send troops to the region.
  
   While Russia has long opposed military action against Iraq, it has
   never taken military steps to intervene.
  
   Russian officials said the attacks against Iraq could derail approval
   by parliament of the long-delayed START II nuclear reduction treaty.
  
   The treaty, signed in 1993, would halve the Russian and American
   nuclear arsenals to about 3,000 to 3,500 warheads each. Russia's
   Communist-led parliament has repeatedly delayed action on the treaty,
   but there had been increasing hopes in recent months that it would be
   approved.
  
   Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, head of the largest faction in the
   Duma, the lower chamber of parliament, said there was no point in
   discussing ratification. Instead, he said, Russia should increase its
   defense budget.
  
   Russia has consistently attempted to find a political solution to the
   dispute with Iraq, an old ally of the Soviet Union. But Moscow is no
   longer a global superpower and is able to do little more than protest
   U.S. actions.
  
   Many Russians seemed critical of the attacks and sympathetic toward
   ordinary Iraqis.
  
   The U.S. and Britain ``certainly had no right to do that - there are
   people there, after all,'' said Nadezhda Nenasheva, walking with her
   child on a Moscow street.
  
   Yeltsin discussed the situation in a phone call with Chinese President
   Jiang Zemin. The two leaders agreed that the attack was
   ``unacceptable, unilateral and contradicting the U.N. charter and the
   principles of international law,'' the Kremlin press service said.
  
   Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev canceled his participation in a session
   of a joint Russia-NATO council in Brussels, Belgium, because of the
   bombings and flew back to Moscow on Thursday, news reports said.
     _________________________________________________________________
        Copyright =A9 1998 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
   The information contained in the AP News report may not be published,
      broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written
                     authority of The Associated Press.


   

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