"The NATO summit in Istanbul this week was a catastrophe," Gleb Pavlovsky, the president of the Efficient Policy Fund, said at a press conference at RIA Novosti Thursday. "It is empty, insignificant, has not made a single proposal to the new NATO members."
"The summit showed that the problems in NATO that surfaced during preparations for the war in Iraq remain, and the French-German bloc has gotten somewhat stronger," said Andrei Kokoshin, the chairman of the State Duma committee for CIS affairs and contacts with compatriots, at the press conference.
Washington tried "to change the situation in Iraq after the Afghan scenario, to change it from an American-British format to a NATO format," he noted. However, NATO members only managed to agree to assist the training of Iraqi law enforcement agencies, he said.
NATO failed to formulate a common program for the fight against terrorism, Mr. Kokoshin said. "Most NATO states are fighting terrorism on their own," he noted.
Regarding the presidential elections in Ukraine on October 31, he said that Russia no longer thought of Ukraine as "a younger brother."
"We are entering a new stage in relations with Ukraine," he said. "We have good strong impulses that have been created by diplomacy."
