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 08 September 2008 09:01 BST

Bush soothes cold war talk

Tuesday, 05 Jun 2007 13:49
George Bush's week-long European tour has begun
George Bush has insisted America's missile defence shield in Europe and Russian president Vladimir Putin's anti-US rhetoric does not herald the beginning of a new cold war.

This weekend Mr Putin condemned US plans to install missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, accusing Washington of aiming its weapons at Russia and not, as it claims, the "rogue states" of Iran and North Korea.

But ahead of this week's G8 summit in Germany, Mr Bush has attempted to play down rising tensions by reiterating that Russia had "nothing to fear" from his country's missile systems.

Speaking from the Czech capital Prague, the US president reiterated that the missiles were a "purely defensive measure".

In a message directly to Mr Putin, who Mr Bush will meet in Heiligendamm at the June 6th to 8th G8 summit, he said: "Why don't you cooperate on the missile defence system? Why don't you participate with the United States? Send your generals over to see how such a system would work, send your scientists."

He went on to say: "The cold war is over. It ended.

"The people of the Czech Republic do not need to choose whether to be a friend of the US or Russia. You can be both."

But in comments reported by the Reuters news agency, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov denied that Iran or North Korea represented a threat to the US.

"What we all need is to join our efforts to fight real, not hypothetical, threats. And for this work, Russia is ready," he said.

In a later speech however, Mr Bush also risked raising tensions between the two nations when he criticised some of Russia's domestic reforms.

"In Russia, reforms that once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development," he said.

Mr Bush, who also questioned some of the policies of the emerging Chinese captialist movement, added that the United States would "continue to build... relationships with these countries and we will do it without abandoning our principles or our values".

However Russia later rebuked these remarks, saying it "shares the world and social values" of the US.

Earlier this week Mr Putin said Moscow would train its missiles on certain European nations if the US continued with plans to deploy its missile defence system.End of story


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