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Russia vows response

MOSCOW: Russia has upped the ante in its standoff with the West over NATO’s planned eastward expansion, vowing to give a “sharp” reply to any move to invite Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance.

U.S. President George W. Bush called for granting the two former Soviet republics a NATO Membership Action Plan at the NATO summit in Bucharest.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denounced the “artificial, completely unnecessary enlargement” of NATO and warned that said Russia would not let it “go unanswered” and was “ready to respond to different scenarios.”

A senior Russian diplomat said the Russian reaction would be “sharp” and “immediate.”

“We are forced to react in a sharp and immediate manner in a situation when a highly powerful and sophisticated military machine keeps advancing closer and closer to the spheres of our strategic interests,” head of the European Cooperation Department Sergei Ryabkov said in an interview posted on Russian Foreign Ministry’s website on Wednesday.

Moscow has also vowed to create more problems for the West over Kosovo’s unilateral independence. Mr. Lavrov said Russia would block Kosovo from becoming a member of the U.N. .

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