TRANSATLANTIC RIFT ON IRAQ IS DEEPENING, RUSSIAN MP SAYS

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MOSCOW, June 29 (RIA Novosti) - The NATO summit in Istanbul has shown that the trans-Atlantic rift on Iraq is becoming deeper, argues Andrei Kokoshin, Chair of the CIS Affairs Committee in the State Duma, or parliament's lower house.

Amidst further exacerbation of the situation in Iraq, the NATO summit has demonstrated there is only so much the U.S. and Britain can do to change the stand on the Iraqi settlement of their key allies in the North Atlantic bloc and of the organization as a whole, Kokoshin said as he was commenting on the forum's result in a RIA interview Tuesday.

According to the Russian MP, France and Germany remain staunchly opposed to the George W. Bush Administration's proposal to send a NATO contingent into Iraq. This would make it possible for the U.S. to shift the burden of responsibility for maintaining security in that country onto NATO's shoulders.

"The new thing was that Turkey took this same stance," Kokoshin said.

In his view, the Istanbul summit has shown that the power transfer arrangements in Afghanistan are highly unlikely to work out for Iraq.

Russia remains negative about NATO's continued expansion eastward, the MP said. "Russia has a large number of complaints about NATO's activity, first of all in connection with NATO's eastward expansion and especially by taking in former Soviet republics," he pointed out.

As Kokoshin sees it, this kind of activity on the part of the trans-Atlantic alliance infringes upon the national interests of Russia and its allies while also diverting countries' resources away from such urgent tasks as the fight against terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

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