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France defends decision to sell Russia amphibious warships

10 February 2010 02:29 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. France defended on Monday its negotiations to sell Russia up to four amphibious assault ships, despite US doubts about the deal and protests from Moscow’s nervous Baltic neighbours, APA reports citing AFP.

Having initially approached France to discuss the sale of one Mistral-class helicopter carrier, Russia has now said it wants four of the modern 21,000-tonne vessels, a senior French defence ministry official said.

At a joint news conference with his US counterpart Robert Gates, Morin said the talks showed that Russia was now considered a partner in European security. "We want to build a relationship of confidence and a new relationship with Russia," said Morin.

"We cannot on the one hand enlist Russia in building this security and at the same time consider that Russia has not profoundly changed since 1991," when the Soviet Union collapsed, he said. The minister argued that refusing the sale would amount to "pursuing trade relations and exchanges with Russia as if it were the Russia of pre-1991."

During Monday’s meeting in Paris, Morin discussed the deal with Gates, who commented tersely: "I would just say that we had a good and thorough exchange of views on it. I’ll just leave it at that."

Gates later brought up the sale in talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, according to officials. "This cooperation with Russia, the terms of which have not yet been defined, appears natural," Sarkozy told him, according to his office. "We can’t expect Russia to behave like a partner, and not ourselves behave like one," he said.

According to a French account of the meeting, Gates said that Washington’s concerns were more about the political signal such a sale would send to Moscow than about any military threat the warships might pose to US allies. Ex-Soviet Baltic states Estonia and Lithuania expressed concern that France is contemplating a deal that would strengthen Russia’s ability to intervene in the countries of its region, as it did in its 2008 war with Georgia.