MOSCOW (AFP)--Moscow will review its relations with NATO after the alliance's "intolerable" reaction to Russia's military actions in Georgia, the Russian envoy to NATO said in an interview published Monday.
Russia-NATO relations "will in any case be reviewed, because NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's statement that Russia used disproportionate force to protect its citizens, that we acted beyond the limits of self-defense, is utterly intolerable," NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin said in an interview with the official government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
"These are not credible allegations, especially coming from the head of an organization like NATO, which has itself used not just disproportionate force but force against civilian targets and the civilian population, especially in its conflict with Yugoslavia in 1999," Rogozin added.
Last Tuesday, de Hoop Scheffer described Russia's actions as "excessive" and "disproportionate" after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 26 member states voted unanimously to condemn Russia's military actions in Georgia.
Russia poured troops and armor into the ex-Soviet Caucasus republic earlier this month after Georgia attacked the Russian-backed separatist region of South Ossetia