Ukraine bid to join Nato threatens wider rift with Russia

Times Online - World: "COLD WAR tensions threatened to flare anew yesterday after Ukraine, once the heart of the Soviet industrial-military complex, declared its intention to join Nato and won the blessing of the United States.
Ukraine�s admission would bring Russia�s Black Sea naval base and much of the former Soviet armaments industry into the embrace of the American-led military alliance, and expand Nato to Russia�s southwestern border.

The newly elected President Yushchenko told a special Ukraine-Nato summit in Brussels of his long-term aim to join the 26-member alliance, although he insisted it was not a move against its giant neighbour Russia.

Russia is coming to terms with its failure to prevent Mr Yushchenko winning December’s election, but is deeply troubled by the threat to its national security by Ukraine’s courting of Nato. Russia’s Southern Fleet is based in Sevastopol, southern Ukraine. The country is also a key designer, manufacturer and exporter of weapons, especially missiles, many of which are in Russia’s arsenal.

The country was controlled by Russia for 300 years before it won independence after the collapse of communism in 1991. Russia had previously resisted Nato’s eastwards advance, and virulently opposed membership for the far less strategicially important former Soviet Baltic states.

Mr Bush questioned Russia’s commitment to democracy in a major speech in Brussels on Monday, and Washington is concerned about Moscow’s plans to sell nuclear fuel to Iran and missiles to Syria. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the Secretary-General of Nato, said he would support Ukraine’s membership and announced a fund to decommission 1.5 million small arms and 133,000 tonnes of munitions in Ukraine as part of reforms of its military. "