NATO SNUBS BUSH

by RAY FLEMING
LAST summer President Bush visited Albania and promised the crowds that their fellow-Albanians in Kosovo would get their independence soon. The promise was premature and we have recently seen the trouble it has caused as Kosovo declared unilateral independence from Serbia. On Tuesday this week President Bush visited Ukraine and publicly declared his “strong support” for its future membership of Nato and also for Georgia's similar bid to join. Mr Bush's statements were made in the knowledge that they would worsen relations with Russia; Ukraine and Georgia are both former Soviet Republics. Fortunately, Nato's summit meeting in Bucharest yesterday decided not to proceed with their membership applications but made a suitably vague but encouraging statement about their future prospects. France and Germany took the lead in arguing that neither Ukraine nor Georgia was yet ready for membership and in doing so they will probably have ensured that Vladimir Putin's visit today to address the Nato summit will be a less tense affair than it might have been. It is understandable that Mr Bush may feel sore that Nato has disregarded his views - after all, almost 60 years ago the United States first saw the necessity for a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to deter Soviet Union ambitions in Western Europe and it has been Nato's mainstay in military terms ever since. But after eight years in office Mr Bush has yet to learn that there are other paths to peace than that of confrontation.