Russia: Poll shows US tops list of countries seen as posing threat to world
MOSCOW, March 14 (Itar-Tass) -- Greenpeace activists have staged an action of protest against a possible war in Iraq. However, the rally was not authorized by Moscow authorities, the city police told Itar-Tass on Friday.
The police said that the rally gathered about 30 people. The Greenpeace members hung out placards with the mottos "Veto to War" and "Stop War" just opposite the Kremlin. The posters were mounted with the help of alpinist equipment. Ten members of the environmental organization were detained and taken to the central police station for interrogation, the source said. Two of the rally's participants managed to escape down the Moscow River on a boat flying the Greenpeace flag.
Most of Russians are strongly opposed to the US' military action against Iraq, a poll suggests.
The poll conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Center has shown that most of Russians (71 percent) see the US on top of the list of countries that pose threat to the world.
Pollsters interpreted this view of the respondents as a way of protesting the US' possible assault of Iraq.
However, 62 percent of those polled were of the opinion that Iraq and North Korea must not be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction.
Ninety-three percent of the respondents are against bombing of Iraq and 91 percent against a ground operation.
Some 87 percent of those polled disprove of plans of occupation of Iraq by troops of the US and its allies.
With a military action against Iraq increasingly looming, numbers of Russians sympathetic with the US have been decreasing.
While 69 percent of people described their attitudes to the US as good in last year's October, their proportion dwindled to 53 per cent in January and to 48 percent in March.
Lithuania's new President Rolandas Paksas has called for a peaceful settlement of the Iraqi crisis. The use of force against Baghdad should be employed only when all other means have been completely exhausted, Paksas stated in parliament on Friday.
Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko has strongly criticized the U.S. policy on Iraq.
The United States is trying to convince the world that Iraq is the strongest link in the axis of evil, and it is filled with weapons of mass destruction, Lukashenko told students of Belarussian State University on Friday.
At the same time, the real reason for the Iraqi situation is well known, it is oil, Lukashenko said. "The entire world understands that, and billions of people stand up for Iraq, yet that will hardly contain a war," he remarked.
It is necessary to do everything "for the peaceful, political and diplomatic settlement of the Iraqi crisis in strict compliance with resolutions of the U.N. Security Council," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov said at Friday consultations with the State Secretary of the Romanian Foreign Ministry.
"Russia objects to the adoption of a new resolution of the U.N. Security Council on Iraq, which actually paves way to the use of force," sources in the Russian foreign ministry cited Fedotov to Itar-Tass.
War against Iraq means more dangerous, unpredictable world - Putin aide Interfax
Moscow, 18 March: Marshal Igor Sergeyev, the Russian Federation president's aide on issues of strategic stability, forecasts serious destabilization of the situation in the world after the start of a US military operation against Iraq.
"The consequences for international security in the event of a new war in Iraq will be unpredictable and extremely negative," Sergeyev told Interfax in an interview on Tuesday [18 March].
"No war develops according to plan and war is always a loss, and first and foremost for whoever starts it," the presidential aide said.
"I'm not sure that war in Iraq will lead to an upturn in the American economy and I have my doubts about how quickly and efficiently it (the USA) will deal with Iraq. Right now nobody can predict the loss that will be inflicted on the civilian population," Sergeyev said. He used to occupy the post of Russian Federation defence minister.
The marshal supposes that war against Iraq is unavoidable.
"In my view, they (members of the anti-Iraq coalition - Interfax) have already taken the decision [to go to war]," Sergeyev said.
He suggested that "the most varied means of waging war" will be used by the USA and its allies in the operation against Iraq".
"It is dreadful to imagine, but in war any means are good. The situation around Iraq has been developing unpredictably and it is complex to predict what they may use there," Sergeyev noted.
Having said that the escalation of tension around Iraq is having a pernicious effect on the situation in the world, Sergeyev added: "The world has entered
an era of unpredictability."