NATO hopes for cooperation with Russia

This year we celebrate the 15th anniversary of the "NATO-Russia" act and the 10th anniversary of the "Russia-NATO Council." “We face similar challenges to our security, and we all benefit through a cooperative approach to solving them. This was our goal at the meeting of the NATO-Russia Council in 2010 in Lisbon, where we decided to build a genuine strategic partnership, and we adhere to our decisions,” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. “I have already spoken with the newly-elected President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov. We are all interested in dialogue, practical cooperation, and that is why we agreed to hold a meeting of foreign ministers in three weeks. Russia's new president and I also agreed to meet soon. Of course, teamwork requires trust and building trust takes time. This is connected to the realization that the most valid approach to improving security is cooperation and not confrontation. We are faced with many similar problems, so they need to be addressed together.

The idea is to be pragmatic. NATO and Russia are not adversaries or enemies. We are fully interested in building a strategic partnership between us. NATO does not pose a threat to Russia: we have signed a transit agreement with Russia, and we appreciate it, because it helps our operation in Afghanistan, which also corresponds to Russia's interests. Let me also emphasize that we use this agreement for the transport of so-called "non-lethal cargo", we do not transport weapons and do not deal with redeployment of troops across your territory. We have no intention of opening a base in Russia, we have a very practical agreement that allows us to ship "non-lethal cargo" in support of our operations in Afghanistan, which also goes for the good of Russia.”

As for Libya, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said: “We have acted strictly in accordance with UN sanctions. The UN Security Council took an historic decision - to protect the civilian population of Libya from attacks of their own government. We have taken steps to implement this resolution of the Security Council. Together with partners from the region, we conducted our operations in full compliance with the mandate of the UN and international law. I believe that we have an obligation to protect the independence of the Security Council dealing with implementation of its important resolutions.”

Speaking about cooperation between NATO and Georgia, Rasmussen confirmed: “We had excellent cooperation with Georgia in the framework of the Special Commission on "NATO-Georgia." In 2008, NATO agreed that Georgia would become a member of NATO sometime in the future, of course, only when it fulfils all the necessary conditions.These conditions have not yet been fulfilled. But Georgia is moving ahead on this way, and this progress is reflected in the joint work of the "NATO-Georgia" Commission. As for the future of Georgia's accession to NATO, it is too early to provide a schedule, but let me emphasize that NATO's door remains open to European countries who wish to become members if they meet certain criteria. This is for us a fundamental principle: Every sovereign state is able to decide the question of accession to NATO itself. This is a fundamental right of all sovereign states to decide which alliance they would like to join.”

Regarding the missile defense system, Rasmussen stated: “NATO has decided to develop a missile defense system, because we believe that the missile threat is a real threat, and we want to protect our population and the population of the Member States from this threat, so we decided to develop a missile defense system of NATO. We expect that the implementation of the middle phase of establishing this system will be announced already in early May, at the Chicago summit. We have invited Russia to cooperate with us in this business, because we have a mutual interest in the field of missile defense to protect the Russian population as well as the population of NATO countries, and to protect them effectively. If we are to cooperate in this matter, the whole system will become much more efficient. Let me also say that the NATO missile defense system is not aimed against Russia, that its architecture is not meant to attack Russia, and in no way undermines the so-called strategic "element of containment" of Russia, so technically it cannot be directed against Russia. From a political point of view, we have no intention of attacking Russia, 15 years ago, in a seminal paper, we stated that neither Russia nor NATO would use force against each other, and it remains in force. I must say that I believe that the best way for Russia to ensure transparency and to make sure that our system is not aimed against Russia, is to accept our invitation to cooperate. In particular, we announced the creation of joint centers, where we could communicate, to prepare joint exercises, to develop common assessments of threats ... We really are going to demonstrate maximum transparency, and we believe that it would be in our common interest to cooperate on missile defense. We will announce the availability of intermediate systems of NATO in Chicago, but nonetheless we intend to continue to develop our dialogue with Russia. I still would like to express hope for an opportunity to find an effective solution. Of course, we will do everything possible to remove the concerns expressed by Russia, but some of the issues of this concern are absolutely unreasonable and we must work closely together to avaoid misunderstandings. I think it would be premature to provide any precise timetable, I just wanted to point out that Chicago - this is not the last time that we will continue our negotiations with Russia and beyond. We also intend to continue to work together in the "Russia-NATO" Council, and not only in regard to missile defense, but also in other areas of common interest.”

Afghanistan is one of these directions. “I understand that this issue is of great interest in Russia, that Russia wants to take part in the debate on the future of Afghanistan in the coming years. Of course, we know from experience that the situation in Afghanistan has a direct impact on the situation in Russia, and therefore we are interested in collectively working with Russia on Afghanistan, and the "Russia-NATO" Council is an excellent forum for such work. I think that we will continue to work in the "Russia-NATO" Council on issues of joint struggle against terrorism, against drugs. I would like to emphasize our efforts in combating drugs and piracy - this is also a direction of mutual interest. So we will work on this spectrum of issues within the “Russia-NATO” Council even after the Chicago summit,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen concluded.