MAFRA (Portugal) - RUSSIA'S President Vladimir Putin drew a parallel between United States plans for a missile shield in Europe and the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, widely regarded as the closest the world came to nuclear war.
But the Kremlin leader added on Friday that his personal friendship with US President George W. Bush has helped to prevent the latest US initiative from turning into a new global disaster.
'I would remind you how relations were developing in an analogous situation in the middle of the 1960s,' he told a news conference after the Russia-EU summit in the Portugal.
'Analogous actions by the Soviet Union when it deployed rockets on Cuba provoked the Cuban missile crisis,' Mr Putin added.
'For us, technologically, the situation is very similar. On our borders such threats to our country are being created.'
A decision by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to send nuclear missiles to Communist ally Cuba put the world on the brink of nuclear war in 1962
2007-10-27
16:01:23
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