September 04, 2007	Tuesday	Sha'aban 21, 1428

MOSCOW, Sept 3: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov underlined Russia’s increasingly muscular foreign policy on Monday, laying out a series of non-negotiable “red line” issues, including Kosovo and US missile defence.

“There are so-called ‘red line’ issues for Russia,” Lavrov said in a speech to students at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations. “There we cannot fail to react and we must stick to our position to the end.”

Lavrov specified Kosovo – where Russia opposes Western proposals to grant the province independence from Serbia – and opposition to US missile defence plans for Central Europe as areas where Moscow would not “horse-trade”.

His comments were the latest sign of hawkish Russian opposition to key areas of US foreign policy under President Vladimir Putin, who is using massive oil and gas revenues to rebuild Russia’s military and restore its diplomatic clout.

Lavrov said some were worried by “the rapid rebirth of our country as one of the leading countries of the world.... However, this does not mean that it’s necessary to think up yet another myth about the Russian threat”.

He also used his speech – an annual occasion marking the start of the academic year at Russia’s most prestigious international affairs institute – to attack a probe by key US ally Britain into the murder of fugitive Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko.

Lavrov dismissed attempts to extradite a KGB veteran over the radiation poisoning in London last year as “a noisy propaganda show”.

“Great Britain has become a voluntary, or involuntary actor in a provocation against Russia,” Lavrov charged.

The Kremlin has already shown itself ready to play hardball on Kosovo and missile defence.

Moscow, a close ally of Serbia used the threat of its veto power in July to block efforts by Western nations to secure a UN Security Council resolution giving independence to Kosovo, an ethnic-Albanian dominated province in southern Serbia.—AFP