November 18, 2001	Sunday	Ramazan 2, 1422

MOSCOW, Nov 17: Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov called on the international community on Saturday not to rush into sending peacekeeping forces to Afghanistan, Interfax news agency reported on Saturday.

“The question of the entry of peace keeping forces into Afghanistan needs to be approached with extreme caution,” Ivanov said.

He added that he did not see Russian forces taking part in any peace keeping force in Afghanistan.

His comments came after the Northern Alliance’s defence minister General Mohammad Quassim Fahim said British commandos were operating at the Bagram air base north of the capital without the anti-Taliban coalition’s agreement.

“The British forces perhaps have an agreement with the UN but not with us,” he said.

Around 100 Royal Marine commandos flew into Bagram on Thursday to pave the way for several thousand more troops to be sent to Afghanistan and to help safeguard aid supplies.

On Thursday US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said US troops were “highly unlikely” to take part in any international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan.

Ivanov also warned against “euphoria over the victory over the Taliban”, saying that they “they are still there” and might adopt the tactics of guerillas in Chechnya with “ambushes, bombings and sabotage”.

BLAIR PLAN: British Prime Minister Tony Blair has proposed closer ties between NATO and Russia to reflect the changed relationship between the former Cold War foes after the Sept 11 attacks, government sources said on Saturday.

Under the proposals, contained in a four-page letter to Britain’s 18 NATO allies and President Vladimir Putin, a new joint council would be set up, opening unprecedented possibilities for joint decision-making and joint action in hotspots of common concern like the Balkans.

British and Russian officials stressed that the proposed council would not mean Russia becoming a full member of NATO.

“They are not the start of Russia joining NATO,” said Ilia Klebanov, the Russian deputy prime minister charged with overseeing military and industrial relations.

And Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, without referring directly to the British offer, repeated calls for a fundamental reform of NATO which he said was “a relic of the Cold War.”

“If in NATO they think that the threat to security has fundamentally changed, and if they recognise that Russia no longer poses a threat, it is essential that they change NATO itself,” he said.

Earlier, a British official said: “This could well lead to taking common decisions together and taking common action together.”

“I can imagine we might well want to do something together in the Balkans.”

NATO’s relations with Moscow are currently enshrined in a treaty creating a Permanent Joint Council, established in May 1997 to reflect deepening ties since the end of the Cold War.

This Ivanov has dismissed as a “talking shop which does nothing.”

Russia and the Alliance also carry out joint military manoeuvres, including naval rescue operations and troop retraining, in Balkan hotspots like Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo.

Ties have been strengthened since Putin offered unprecedented support for the US-led anti-terrorist war in Afghanistan.

Klebanov said: “There was a premise of there being a rapprochement before September 11 but the attacks have accelerated the process.”

British officials said the “welcome” Russia gave to having US and coalition forces based in Central Asia, if necessary, showed the extent of the change in relations.

“There was a good deal of cooperation that came out of September 11 and pushed us together and I think it also made both sides, who had been talking about how the NATO-Russia relationship should evolve, think we must really get on with this,” the British government source said.

“It seems both the American President and President Putin seem to think along the same lines.—AFP