RussoAmerican Relations

[venator]

AT U.N., RUSSIA CALLS FOR EXPANDING LIST OF TERRORISTS BEING HARBORED.

Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said: "Harboring terrorists, their henchmen, and sponsors undermines the unity and mutual trust of parties to the anti-terrorist front, serves as a justification for their actions, and actually encourages them to commit similar crimes in other countries." "Those who slaughtered children in Beslan and hijacked planes to attack America are creatures of the same breed," he added. Lavrov proposed that the list of terrorists compiled after 9/11 be expanded. This list imposes U.N. member states to a travel ban, an arms
embargo, and freezing of assets. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that he would work closely with Russia to prevent terrorists from abusing the asylum status; however, although Lavrov did not name names, it
is clear that he was referring in part to Britain's granting of refugee status to Akmd Zakayev, an envoy for Chechen terrorist leader Aslan Maskhadov, and U.S. asylum for Ilyas Akhmaedov, whom Maskhadov named as his foreign minister while he was Chechnya's President in 1999.

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(Read in the Washington Post "Not the Soviet Union," op-ed by Eugene Rumer, senior fellow at the National Defense University's Institute for National Strategic Studies, Sept. 24, 2004.)

THE U.S. MUST CHANGE ITS POLICIES TOWARD RUSSIA. Taking up the pundits bashing of Russian President Putin's recent actions following the Beslan atrocity, Rumer refutes that Putin is changing the country back to a dictatorship from a democracy. He argues Yeltsin's and the oligarch's actions didn't create a democracy, but ruined the country, and since 1998, after the economic collapse, Putin has begun to restore the country's esteem in the world and stablize the economy. So if we don't like the new Putin initiatives, what the U.S. must do is change the way it deals with Russia.

Any suggestions?

[Revolution]

It think the US should leave Russia alone and let Russia do what Russia has to do