By SLOBODAN LEKIC | Guardian | 11 Feb 2007
NY Times (longer article)
MUNICH, Germany (AP) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday blamed U.S. policy for inciting other countries to seek nuclear weapons to defend themselves from an “almost uncontained use of military force” – a stinging attack that underscored growing tensions between Washington and Moscow.
“Unilateral, illegitimate actions have not solved a single problem, they have become a hotbed of further conflicts,” Putin said at a security forum attracting senior officials from around the world.
“One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.”
The Bush administration said it was “surprised and disappointed” by Putin’s remarks. “His accusations are wrong,” said Gordon Johndroe, Bush’s national security spokesman.
In what the Russian leader’s spokesman acknowledged was his harshest criticism of the United States, Putin attacked Bush’s administration for stoking a new arms race by planning to deploy a missile defense system in eastern Europe and for backing a U.N. plan that would grant virtual independence to Serbia’s breakaway province of Kosovo. Russia’s reputation as a supplier of natural gas to the West was damaged in the recent past when it halted supplies to Europe through main pipelines crossing Belarus and Ukraine due to pricing disputes with those two countries.
Merkel also said that the international community is determined to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Tehran needed to accept demands made by the U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Agency, she said.
On the sidelines of the conference, Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani defended his country’s nuclear program as peaceful, saying: “We are no threat to our region or other countries,” while indicating a willingness to return to negotiations.
Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and David Rising contributed to this report.
