Nato tells Putin to talk - not posture

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Nato's secretary-general, has warned Vladimir Putin that next week's summit of the 26-member Atlantic alliance must not be marred by a new display of "unhelpful rhetoric" from Russia's president, directed at the west.
As the military alliance's national leaders prepare to meet in Bucharest for the annual gathering, tensions between Nato and Russia are running high because of Washington's insistence that Ukraine and Georgia should be allowed to take a significant new step towards joining the organisation.
But while the secretary-general said he was looking forward to frank exchanges between Mr Putin and alliance leaders at a session of the Nato-Russia Council, he said he hoped the discussion would also be constructive.
"The volume of music we get next week will to a large extent depend on the tone that President Putin uses in the NRC," Mr de Hoop Scheffer told the Financial Times in an interview. "I do not know what that tone will be."
However, the secretary-general expressed the hope that Mr Putin, who will be attending a Nato summit for the first time, would not use the occasion to launch another blunt threat to the west.
Mr de Hoop Scheffer said: "Let's try to avoid unhelpful rhetoric, like, 'We will target missiles on nation A, B and C.' That is not only unhelpful. It makes me remember a time when I grew up when there was a Berlin Wall and Iron Curtain. . . So let us refrain from rhetoric."

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