Medvedev calls for EU-US-Russia peace treaty

PHILIPPA RUNNER

06.06.2008 @ 09:24 CET

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in Berlin on Thursday (5 June) called for a new EU-US-Russia security treaty in a conciliatory speech, even as EU diplomats landed in Georgia to help avert the risk of armed conflict on Europe's fringe.

The new deal - a "legally-binding European Security Treaty" - should cover arms control, illegal immigration and poverty, on the model of the 1928 multilateral Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as a foreign policy tool.

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The agreement would be negotiated at a European summit including Russia, the EU, all of Europe's non-EU states, the US and Canada in order to embrace "the whole Euro-Atlantic space from Vancouver to Vladivostok."

"It would clarify, finally, the meaning of the power factor in relations within the Euro-Atlantic community," Mr Medvedev said, calling for "truly equal cooperation between Russia, the European Union and North America."

The new Russian leader complained about US missile shield plans and NATO expansion, saying "tendencies towards a weakening of mutual understanding worry us."

But he struck a milder note in Berlin than his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, did in his famous "Munich speech" of February 2007, where he denounced US attempts to create a unipolar world order.

"If I may use the language of [Cold War era spy novelist John] Le Carre, Russia has come in from the cold," Mr Medvedev said on his first state trip to Europe since his appointment in May.

He called for more European-Russian consortiums to operate gas and oil pipelines in future and tried to soothe German investors' worries over Russia's scary corporate ownership track record.

"[We must] establish genuine respect for the law, to overcome legal nihilism, which seriously impedes development," the president said.

Warm words and frozen conflicts

Mr Medvedev's warm words contrasted with the situation in the South Caucasus however, where escalating tensions between Russia and EU-ally Georgia threaten to plunge the region back into armed conflict.

The UN recently confirmed that Russia shot down a Georgian drone over Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia region, with Moscow also sending 300 extra soldiers to bolster its 2,500-strong "peacekeeping" force in the territory.

"Moscow and Tbilisi need to cease military preparations in and around Abkhazia and cool rhetoric lest their increasingly dangerous confrontation brings war," NGO the International Crisis Group has warned.

Russia's actions were also condemned this week by NATO and a European Parliament resolution, which states "Russian troops have lost their role of neutral and impartial peacekeepers."

"The last Russian measures don't contribute to a lower temperature," EU top diplomat Javier Solana said on arriving in Georgia on Thursday morning. "I came here in the name of the EU, to again show the friendship, the deep ties, which Georgia has with the EU."

Mr Solana plans to meet with rebel leaders in Abkhazia on Friday, but EU diplomats told Reuters there is little chance for a peacekeeping mission under an EU flag in the disputed zone.