Rumsfeld spoke after holding talks August 27 in Fairbanks, Alaska, with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov.
Rumsfeld said he hoped Russia would consider converting some of its intercontinental ballistic missiles for the same purpose, but Ivanov appeared to indicate opposition, saying Rumsfeld's plans raise Russian concerns.
(Reuters, AP)
Russia And The West
(epa)
COOPERATION, CONFLICT, CONFRONTATION: Relations between Russia and the West are notoriously volatile. "To see the kind of relationship that presidents Bush and Putin have developed and to see Russia firmly anchored in the West, that's really a dream of 300 years, not just of the post-Cold War era," then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said in May 2002.
But observers have increasingly called into question the extent of the shared values between Russia and the West, particularly on issues relating to the transformations going on in other former Soviet countries.
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