#5
Fight against terrorism no reason to expand NATO, says Russian security chief
ITAR-TASS

Moscow, 8 November: The pooling of international efforts to fight terrorism must not be used to justify the plans for NATO's eastward expansion, Secretary of the Russian Security Council Vladimir Rushaylo told reporters here on Thursday [8 November].

"Several leaders of countries that are already members of NATO and of those that are planning to shortly join the North Atlantic Alliance have repeatedly stated that only the bloc's rapid enlargement could help effectively oppose terrorism," Rushaylo stated.

However, he stressed, "the idea of pooling the efforts of all the world community in the fight against terrorism should not be used as a screen to cope with other goals and tasks".

"NATO's expansion, both past and planned, is not linked directly with the intensification of the fight against terrorism and, due to several reasons, it can hardly be expected to give a powerful impetus to pooling the efforts of all the nations in the fight against the twenty-first-century challenge," Rushaylo stated.

"Only the formation of a broad antiterrorist coalition, outside the bounds of individual blocs and alliances, will help create a single world system of security without any dividing lines," the secretary of the Russian Security Council stressed.

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