Russia signals support for widening of war on terror

Russia yesterday signalled for the first time that it could support an expansion of Washington's war on terrorism beyond Afghanistan.

Sergei Ivanov, the Russian defence minister, made it plain that the price for supporting US strikes on targets beyond Afghanistan was that Russia be included in the deliberations on where to attack.

In an interview last week, President Vladimir Putin said the emphasis of widening the war on terrorism should be on financial policing and closing down the money channels funding international terrorism. He came out sharply against taking the war to Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi regime.

But yesterday in Brussels, following talks with the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, Mr Ivanov said Russia could support operations to "destroy international terrorist structures" provided Moscow was satisfied that there was strong evidence to hand.

Echoing Mr Putin's earlier interview, Mr Ivanov said that Moscow had not received any persuasive evidence so far to support widening the war, despite the unprecedented cooperation between Russia, the US and Britain in intelligence-sharing to combat terrorism.

"If some other territories [outside Afghanistan] are at issue and Russia gets strong arguments that prove the existence of international terrorist structures, then why not support operations to destroy them," Mr Ivanov told the Interfax news agency in Brussels, where he is having talks with Mr Rumsfeld and Nato defence ministers.

Last week the Russian foreign ministry said it was against widening the war without a UN security council decision authorising the further use of force.

But Mr Ivanov made no mention of UN approval yesterday. He singled out the US and Britain for praise in their conduct of the Afghan operation and took a swipe at Nato for being more of a talking shop than a decisive player.

Russia, the US and Britain, he said, "are sharing intelligence information on a very serious and unprecedented scale. This has never happened before. There is nobody to share information with in Nato. It does not have a structure with serious intelligence or serious decision-taking capability even on Afghanistan, while the US and Britain do."