EU a hostage to anti-Russian interests : Schroeder

Moscow, Sep 9 (UNI) Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder today accused European Union (EU) of applying double standards in discussing US plans to deploy national missile shield in Europe and becoming a hostage to anti-Russian interests.

"The European Union has become a hostage to nationalistic anti-Russian interests of certain EU members. This concerns the Polish leadership and the leaders of a number of other EU countries," Schroeder said here at a presentation ceremony of his memoirs published in Russia.

"The EU should reject these narrow-minded nationalistic interests to get rid of trends obstructing the development of Russia's relations with the European Union and European integration," he said.

On the problem of the deployment of elements of the US missile defence in Europe, Schroeder said, everything was being presented here as if this were only a problem for Poland, the Czech Republic and the US and as if it were not a problem for the entire European Union.

"The lack of logic in these statements can be proven by the fact that the conflict over the sales of Polish meat to Russia is being described as a conflict at a European level," he said adding "Certain EU members use the European Union's position to resolve their own issues." "This is harmful to the integration at the European level, because it is in Europe's interests to sometimes forget about the interests of individual countries," Interfax news agency quoted Schroeder as saying.

Russian political analysts, Vyacheslav Nikonov and Vitaly Tretyakov, in their remarks, said the relations between Russia and the European Union "are experiencing an obvious crisis and have reached a dead end." UNI