'Old spy' rebuts Putin claims
Robert Gates was appointed US defence secretary in December
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Russian president Vladimir Putin has accused the US of fostering insecurity among members of the international community. |  |
Sunday, 11, Feb 2007 07:31
US defence secretary Robert Gates has played down Russian president Vladimir Putin's speech yesterday criticising the American foreign policy.
Addressing this weekend's security conference in Munich, the former CIA director rejected Mr Putin's claims that "nobody feels secure anymore".
Referring to the Russian president's speech, he said: "I have, like your second speaker yesterday, a starkly different background - a career in the spy business. And, I guess, old spies have a habit of blunt speaking."
Mr Putin served as a senior officer in the KGB, the Soviet-era intelligence service. Although the two were once cold war rivals in the ideological battle between communism and capitalism, Mr Gates said that such outmoded binary models of international relations were now outdated.
"We all face many common problems and challenges that must be addressed in partnership with other countries, including Russia. One cold war was quite enough," Mr Gates said.
Observers have commented that under Mr Putin's presidency Russia has become more confrontational, pointing to recent spats with former Soviet satellites like Georgia and Belarus as examples of its increasingly bullish foreign policy.
Mr Putin made a point yesterday of expressing his concerns about the eastward expansion of Nato, the US-led military alliance whose theatres of operations have extended via the Balkans to Afghanistan since the end of the cold war.
He described the process of Nato expansion as "provoking reduction of mutual trust".