Subject: Putin warns U.S. in missile talks

From: "Seth Bergman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:14:54 +0200

U.S. officials said Russia had the right to withdraw from the treaty but expressed skepticism that the bilateral agreement could be extended to other countries, which have their own defense needs."The indirect fire attack resulted in three large explosions near the Dora market," the military said.Despite U.S. pledges of cooperation and new ideas on missile defense, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were warned by President Vladimir Putin to back off on missile defense plans for the former Soviet sphere.MOSCOW, Russia (AP) -- President Bush's top two Cabinet officials, expecting a polite photo op, were ambushed by a Russian leader who fears Eastern Europe may be turned into a U.S. staging point for a new Cold War.Turkey has threatened such action after congressional moves to declare that the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in World War I was "genocide."Turkey -- now a NATO member and a key U.S. ally in the war on terror -- accepts Armenians were killed but calls it a massacre during a chaotic time, not an organized campaign of genocide.The recent rise in tensions between Turkey and the United States has led the military to increase its planning for alternatives, two military officials with direct knowledge of the ongoing assessment said.The attack comes a day after a security official in Iraq's Salaheddin province said that a U.S. military operation Thursday night killed 20 civilians, most of them women and children. Full storyThe U.S. military said terrorists on Friday fired three mortar rounds into the southern Baghdad district of Dora, killing one civilian and wounding eight others -- including four children under 10 years old."We may decide someday to put missile defense systems on the moon, but before we get to that we may lose a chance for agreement because of you implementing your own plans," he told Rice and Gates in Russian, according to an Associated Press translation.