NATO Turns To Russia For Help In Afghanistan
NATO Turns To Russia For Help In Afghanistan
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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, meeting today to consider new strategies to bring development and peace to increasingly violent Afghanistan, is looking to its old Cold War rival for help.
NATO is seeking assistance from Russia even though Afghans on both sides of the current struggle have bitter memories of the old Soviet Union's brutal 1979 invasion and decade-long occupation that ended in a humiliating withdrawal of troops by Moscow.
The transatlantic alliance will stop short of asking for Russian troops or the dreaded attack helicopters used in Afghanistan during the 1980s, since that would represent a huge propaganda coup for the Taliban insurgents.
But NATO is interested in Russian help in transporting equipment and troops into Afghanistan through Russian territory, officials said yesterday.
The Russian government could make contributions that would include "regular use of Russian transport means to get supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan (and) possible Russian contributions to the re-equipment of the Afghan army," said Robert Simmons, NATO's special envoy for the Caucasus and Central Asia, according to a report by Agence France-Presse.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier, who arrived here for a meeting with European Union officials to discuss Canada-EU trade as well as the Afghanistan mission, was not immediately available for comment on the matter.
But Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has been particularly cool toward Russia, not sending a congratulatory message this week to newly elected President Dmitry Medvedev.
The Harper government twice last year issued sternly worded official statements questioning Moscow's slippery slide away from democracy under former president Vladamir Putin, who hand-picked Medvedev as his successor.
