Political reaction: Russia: Moscow sent a chill through relations with Washington this weekend, pledging unswerving opposition to war in Iraq and demanding an end to "Cold War-style" US spy flights over a sensitive part of southern Russia, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Moscow
Foreign Minister Mr Igor Ivanov also joined his Chinese counterpart in urging an immediate end to the military assault on Iraq, and demanded that the United States respect the major oil deals signed by Russian firms with President Saddam Hussein.
"Iraq does not need democracy brought on the wings of Tomahawks," Mr Ivanov said on Saturday, referring to the cruise missiles being used to bombard Iraqi cities.
He also warned Russia would block any motion in the United Nations aimed at justifying military action or a post-war US presence in the oil-rich Gulf state.
"We will follow this very carefully and will not, of course, give legitimacy to this action in the UN Security Council."
Moscow, which hopes to recoup $8 billion in debt from Baghdad, fears that its opposition to the US assault could jeopardise Russian companies' deals to develop Iraq's oil reserves, the second largest in the world.
"Although it is said that Iraq's natural resources belong only to the Iraqi people, there will be a great desire to acquire these resources," an uncharacteristically abrasive Mr Ivanov said in televised comments.
"We will have to defend our interests to prevent the contracts signed under Saddam Hussein being annulled and make sure that the Iraqi debt owed to us is respected."
Mr Ivanov spoke to Chinese Foreign Minister Mr Li Zhaoxing yesterday, and reiterated the vehement opposition to war felt by both veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council.
"Russia and China call decisively for the swift termination of military action against Iraq, which was undertaken outside the UN Security Council and has no legal basis," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement after the two men spoke by telephone.
The war in Iraq, and the divisive UN debate over arms inspections that preceded it, have buffeted US-Russian relations that had seemed solid under Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin.
They took another jolt on Saturday when Russia scrambled two fighter jets to intercept a US U-2 spy plane flying close to its frontier with Georgia, a former Soviet state in the Caucasus mountains that borders the rebel Russian republic of Chechnya.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was the third such flight in the last month, and brushed aside US claims that the spy planes were gathering intelligence on the "international terrorists" that Moscow claims to be fighting in Chechnya.
The ministry said it had protested to the US embassy here over flights that were "suggestive of a return to practices remembered from the Cold-War era". There was no official reaction here yesterday to a report in the Washington Post that said the US had complained to Moscow over its refusal to stop Russian companies selling illegal weapons to the Iraqi military.