Subject: Hong Kong's leader is picked by 800-member committee loyal to Beijing

From: "Corinne Self" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:22:31 +0100

U.S. officials said Russia had the right to withdraw from the treaty but expressed skepticism that the bilateral agreement could be extended to other countries, which have their own defense needs.Meanwhile, two U.S. soldiers were killed and five others were wounded in a mortar attack launched "in the vicinity of Baghdad" on Wednesday, the U.S. military said Saturday. The deaths put the total number of U.S. military personnel killed in the Iraq war at 3,827.The pact eliminated the deployment of Soviet and U.S. ballistic missiles of intermediate range and was a landmark step in arms control just two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall and later the breakup of the Soviet Union."I know that we don't always see eye to eye on every element of the solutions to these issues," Rice said. "Nonetheless, I believe we will do this in a constructive spirit, that we will make progress during these talks as we continue to pursue cooperation."The United States has repeatedly rejected Russian demands to freeze U.S. negotiations with Poland and the Czech Republic, and Rice did so again Friday, said three senior U.S. officials present at the sessions with Rice, Gates, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe diplomatic discussions, maintained that differences were narrowed but progress was incremental and might not produce ultimate understandings.In addition to the problems with missile defense, Putin warned that Russia might abandon its obligations under a 1987 missile treaty with the United States if it is not expanded to constrain other missile-armed countries.Initial reaction from Lavrov and Serdyukov, though, was less gracious."We see two serious problems with these proposals," Lavrov told reporters at the news conference with Rice, Gates and Serdyukov. He said the two sides still disagree about the threat to Europe and complained that the negotiations with the Poles and Czechs were continuing.Serdyukov agreed.