NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says Moscow has not yet responded to the proposal
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg says Moscow has not yet responded to the North Atlantic Alliance’s remaining proposal to hold a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council (NRC). He said this in an interview published on Tuesday with the DPA news agency.
“At the beginning of 2020, we invited Russia to the NATO-Russia Council meeting. They have not responded, but our invitation still stands”, – Stoltenberg asserted. – “I firmly believe in dialogue and I encourage Russia to do so”, – he added. – “I think that dialogue will contribute to reducing the risk of incidents, accidents and miscalculations and that it can contribute to improving relations”, – the NATO secretary general said.
A report on the reform of the alliance, NATO 2030, was released in early December, saying that the organisation considers Russia to be the main military threat to its security until at least 2030. However, the document stated that NATO considered it necessary to preserve the NATO-Russia Council as a tool for political dialogue on peaceful coexistence with Russia, but the alliance would conduct the dialogue “from a position of strength and Atlantic unity”.
Commenting on the report, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stressed that the Russian Federation was bewildered by its claims that Moscow had rejected NATO’s attempts to build a joint security architecture. According to the diplomat, it was NATO that rejected Russia’s proposals for a way out of the crisis in relations.
Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry stressed that if an NRC meeting is to be held, it “should be oriented towards a substantive conversation on finding solutions to existing problems” and a meeting for the sake of a meeting is unacceptable. The ministry explained that the idea of convening an NRC had been raised in contacts between the NATO secretariat and the Russian permanent mission to the alliance. “No agreement was reached,” the Foreign Ministry said. – We were once again proposed to discuss Ukraine, which makes no sense on this platform. As for the other topics, their consideration in the context of NATO’s rejection of practical cooperation and military-to-military contacts, as well as the lack of readiness to restore such a dialogue, is unlikely to have any added value.