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US, Russian military chiefs meet in Finland

By MATTI HUUHTANEN – Oct 21, 2008

HELSINKI, Finland (AP) — American and Russian military leaders met Tuesday for unannounced talks in Finland, discussing Georgia, the Black Sea and Afghanistan, officials said. It was the highest-level military meeting between the two countries since Russia's war with U.S. ally Georgia in August.

The participants included Adm. Michael G. Mullen, the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his Russian counterpart, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, according to U.S. Embassy spokesman Kim Hargan. Makarov became Russia's top military officer in June.

"They didn't want it to be high-profile or anything," Hargan said, explaining why it was unannounced. He refused to elaborate further.

Finland, a neutral Nordic country, shares an 800-mile (1,300-kilometer) border with Russia and was the venue of several U.S.-Soviet meetings during the Cold War. Adm. Juhani Kaskeala, the head of Finland's defense forces, organized the meeting at an isolated manor house outside Helsinki.

Mullen later called U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates to update him, saying they had a "productive, businesslike conversation," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said, adding that Gates was comfortable with the meeting taking place.

Defense officials in Moscow and at NATO would not officially comment on the talks.

A U.S. defense official said Makarov suggested the meeting and the two military leaders covered a range of topics including Georgia, Black Sea operations, and Afghanistan as it related to NATO involvement.

It was the first time the two had met each other in person, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the meeting.

An internal Pentagon news service report said the two had spoken previously on the telephone.

After the Georgia-Russian crisis broke out Aug. 6, Mullen spoke on the phone with Makarov, who presided over Russia's incursion into Georgia over the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the American Forces Press Service said, quoting an unidentified source.

The report said after the fighting started, Mullen and Makarov discussed the flight of U.S. Air Force C-17 transport jets that carried Georgian troops serving in Iraq back to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, and later they discussed the USS Mount Whitney, which carried humanitarian supplies to the Georgian port of Poti.

Makarov gave assurances that Russia would not interfere with the U.S. military movements, the Pentagon report said.

The war between Russia and Georgia strained already tense ties. Georgia, a stalwart U.S. ally and aspiring NATO member, has received hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid and its armed forces received extensive training from U.S. instructors.

Those moves have irked Russia, which views Georgia as part of its historical sphere of influence and fears the prospect of another former Soviet republic joining NATO.

Washington and Moscow have also clashed over U.S. plans to base elements of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia fears the system would be used to either spy on its military or reduce its nuclear deterrent.

Two months ago, Russia halted military cooperation with NATO, accusing the West of "double standards" over the Georgia conflict. However, it said it still wants to keep working with the alliance to fight terrorism and drug trafficking.

Moscow said the freeze would halt military exercises, exchanges of military delegations, visits by high-level NATO officials to Moscow and stopovers by NATO warships in Russian ports.

Tuesday's meeting came a day after Mullen became the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs to visit Belgrade since 1951. He met Serbian counterpart Gen. Zdravko Ponos, and the two said military cooperation between their countries was good despite strained political relations over Kosovo.

Associated Press writers Pauline Jelinek in Washington, Constant Brand in Brussels, Belgium, and Mike Eckel in Moscow contributed to this report.


Questi tizi qui fanno summit in giro per il mondo con una certa fretta....

Che ne dite di aprire un topic esclusivo di come ci si stia "attrezzando" in caso di : sommossa popolare nel caso vincesse McCain, nuova pandemia virale, new WWIII , new "BIG One"?
Così...tanto per "sdrammatizzare...:"