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Israel Tiptoes Around Georgian-Russian Conflict

[Jerusalem Post] Herb Keinon - Although Israeli companies have sold arms to Tbilisi and trained units of the Georgian army, there is not a significant Israeli component to the Georgian-Russian flare-up. Both the Georgians and the Russians know that the estimated $300-500 million in weapons and training that Israel has sold to Georgia over the last decade is not what has equipped the Georgians for a war with Russia. Numerous other countries, including the U.S., France and Ukraine, have sold arms and allowed ex-officers to help train the military there. Although for historic, emotional and sentimental reasons, the Israeli tendency is to back the pro-Western, pro-American Georgians - the David in this fight - Israel has a real strategic interest in not infuriating the Russians. Moscow is a major supplier of arms to Syria and Iran, and Israel would like to keep Russia from selling arms to those two countries that could tilt the region's strategic balance. If Moscow took the gloves off, they could sell much more dangerous weapons systems to our neighbors, such as land-to-land missiles. It should be noted that the much-discussed sale to Iran of the S-300 multi-target anti-aircraft-missile system, one of the most advanced in the world, has not yet gone through.
2008-08-11 01:00:00
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