Gates to Fly to Russia Despite Libya
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will travel to Russia this weekend, the Pentagon said March 18, dismissing the possibility the trip might be delayed over fast-moving events in Libya.
Gates, who would be involved at some level in any possible U.S. military action in Libya following Thursday’s U.N. Security Council vote authorizing a no-fly zone, is due to meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow March 15.
Asked whether the trip — Gates’ fourth to Russia as defense secretary — might be postponed, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said: “There is no consideration being given to delaying this trip.”
“He obviously flies in the aircraft he flies in — and with the staff he has — so that he can carry out his responsibilities no matter where he is in the world,” he said.
“So just because he’ll be traveling doesn’t mean he won’t be able to attend to other issues that are pressing at the time.”
Gates travels in an E-4B, a specially outfitted Boeing 747 officially called the “National Airborne Operations Center” but nicknamed as the “Doomsday plane” for its ability to serve as an airborne command center in the event of a nuclear attack.
With conference and briefing rooms and advanced communications equipment, the E-4B refuels in mid-air and has electromagnetic pulse protection and nuclear and thermal effects shielding.
In Russia, Gates is expected to address younger officers on Monday in St. Petersburg. He will head to Moscow on Tuesday for talks with his counterpart, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, and then meet Medvedev.
Gates is a holdover from the Bush administration who is due to retire in the coming months, and the Pentagon is billing the trip as his final visit to Russia as a U.S. official following a long career largely spent in the CIA gathering intelligence on the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
He saw first-hand how the U.S.-Russia relationship deteriorated at the end of the Bush-era with Russia’s 2008 war against pro-western Georgia, and then improved under President Barack Obama’s so-called “reset” of relations with Moscow.
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