Putin's speech showed why NATO must enlarge-Czechs

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

MUNICH, Germany, Feb 11 (Reuters) A speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin criticising the United States and NATO showed why it is important to expand the transatlantic military alliance, the Czech foreign minister said.

''We have have to thank President Putin, who not only took good care (to create) great publicity for this conference, greater than we expected, but who clearly and convincingly argued why NATO should be enlarged,'' Karel Schwarzenberg told a security conference yesterday.

In a speech yesterday at the same conference in Munich, Putin accused the United States of making the world a more dangerous place by pursuing policies aimed at making it ''one single master''.

In that speech, which one US senator said smacked of Cold War rhetoric, Putin also said NATO enlargement was ''a serious factor provoking reduced mutual trust''.

Like other formerly communist members of the European Union and NATO, Czechs remain highly suspicious of Putin's Russia and fear the new Moscow wants to make Russia a dominant power in Europe the way the Soviet Union once was.

The Czech Republic, part of the former Czechoslovakia which split into separate Czech and Slovak states in 1993, spent more than four decades under the effective domination of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Since its creation in 1949, NATO has grown from 12 to 26 states.

The Czech Republic joined in 1999.

The United States is hoping to deploy an anti-missile system in the Czech Republic and Poland, plans that have drawn a barrage of hostile comment from Russian officials in recent weeks.

Schwarzenberg shrugged off Moscow's criticisms. ''Demands from other states will not influence our government,'' he told a questioner, adding that the missisle shield was ''an internal issue'' for Prague.

REUTERS SY RN1537

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