Standard international practice

[TankGirl]

MosNews:

Russia Defends Policy of Preventive Strikes in Other Countries

Russia on Friday defended a plan to launch preventive strikes on guerrilla bases in other countries, saying it was merely following accepted international practice.

“I have said several times that we are at war. When you are at war, you act like you are at war,” Reuters quoted Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov as saying to an audience of military attaches in Moscow in response to a question about preventive strikes.

Moscow has repeated this policy in the past, more strongly so after the Beslan hostage-taking in September, when more than 350 people died after Chechen guerrillas seized a school in the Caucasus region of North Ossetia.

The policy has worried rights groups and foreign officials who fear Moscow might violate international law, but said Russia had not invented it.

“Russia is not the only country that has announced the possibility of using or carrying out preventive strikes. I would like to stress that we did not invent it,” Ivanov added, hinting that Moscow was following a U.S. lead.

“In practice, such strikes have already been used against Afghanistan, Iraq and in other regions. (The idea) already exists, it is standard international practice.”

While Russia has never specified which countries could be the target of such preventive strikes, many commentators have pointed to Georgia, which shares a mountainous border with Chechnya.

Russian warplanes have already struck alleged militant bases in remote Georgian valleys several times, and officials still accuse Russia’s southern neighbor of harboring Chechen rebels.