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Russia says does not want to be behind Iron Curtain again

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President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday that tensions with the West over the Georgia conflict do not mean Russia wants to isolate itself behind a new Iron Curtain.
MOSCOW, September 19 (RIA Novosti) - President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday that tensions with the West over the Georgia conflict do not mean Russia wants to isolate itself behind a new Iron Curtain.

The statement came after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday that Russia's "aggression" against Georgia last month had put the country on a path of "self-imposed isolation and international irrelevance," and urged Western states to stand up to Russia's bullying behavior.

"All the time they are saying 'Finally they [Russian authorities] showed their true face ... the hawks have taken the upper hand,'" Medvedev said.

"In actual fact they push us down that path of development, which is not based on full-fledged, civilized cooperation with other countries, but on autonomous development behind thick walls, behind an Iron Curtain," Medvedev said at a meeting with civil society organizations in the Kremlin.

"This is not our path," he said. "There is no point in returning to the past, we have made our choice."

In an apparent reference to Rice's speech, the president said: "I opened the Web this morning and saw our American friends saying they will continue supporting teachers, doctors, scientists, labor union leaders, judges in Russia."

"What does that mean? Do they plan to feed our judges? Will they nurture corruption? If this goes on like that, they will soon start picking presidents here," he said.

"We do not preach at anyone, we want our arguments to be heard and the difficult choice this country made recently to be understood by our international partners," Medvedev said. "This is something we will strive for despite all sorts of rubbish we have heard from different sides recently."

The majority of Western powers sided with Tbilisi over the South Ossetia crisis, criticizing Russia's military response to Georgia's attack as excessive and also condemning Moscow's August 26 recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.

Russia said it was its moral duty to protect civilians and peacekeepers in the region and blamed the United States and other NATO countries for encouraging Georgian aggression by backing President Mikheil Saakashvili and supplying arms and training the ex-Soviet republic's military.

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