LONDON - Seeking to reassure countries grown fearful of Russia, Western defense ministers will consider the creation of a rapid-response force that could be sent into nations feeling threatened by possible aggression, a senior U.S. Defense official said Thursday.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is scheduled to deliver his own major address on Russia today, sounded a more moderate line to reporters in London. "We need to proceed with caution," he said, "because there are a range of views on how to respond from some of our friends in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states to some of the countries of Western Europe."
Gates said he was trying to find a "middle ground" in their views. Although he didn't mention the new NATO force in his meeting with reporters, it could serve as such a compromise solution.
The creation of such a force would take NATO back to its roots as a deterrent against Russian aggression after years of concentrating on missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan. The Bush administration is pushing the idea as a compromise solution that could reassure allies without provoking Russia. NATO defense chiefs plan to discuss the proposal at a meeting today.
At the same time, however, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stepped up the U.S. denunciation of Moscow, complaining in a speech in Washington that Russia had shown a "worsening pattern of behavior" in which it was "increasingly authoritarian at home and aggressive abroad."
Rice, delivering a major policy speech before a meeting of the German Marshall Fund, complained that Moscow had intimidated neighbors, sold arms to countries and groups that threaten peace, used oil and gas as a "political weapon" and persecuted Russian dissidents and journalists.
She also said Russia had threatened to target other countries with nuclear weapons, a reference to a Russian official's warning to Poland over its recent missile-defense deal with the United States.
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