By Xinhua,
Corfu (Greece) : NATO and Russia have agreed to resume thier military ties that have been frozen after the war in Georgia last year, officials said Saturday.
“We restarted our relations at political level. We also agreed to restart military-to-military contacts, which have been frozen since last August,” NATO Secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters after a meeting of the two sides here Saturday.
He said he did not exclude the possibility that Russia would allow NATO forces to transport weapons to Afghanistan via the Russian soil. He added that the two sides are yet to discuss the specifics of the military-to-military cooperation.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and foreign ministers of the 28 NATO states participated in the discussions.
The NATO chief expressed hope that Russia would send warships again to participate in NATO’s campaign to protect the energy supply routes in the Mediterranean.
He said NATO and Russia should also cooperate on Afghanistan, counter-terrorism, non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and counter-narcotics.
NATO suspended high-level political contacts with Moscow after the Russia-Georgia military conflict in August 2008. Saturday’s ministerial meeting has been the highest political contact between the two sides since then.
De Hoop Scheffer said the Georgia issue is no longer an impediment in the NATO-Russia relations although the two sides still have fundamental differences.
“Despite the fact that there are differences … the spirit (of the meeting) was one of wanting to cooperate,” he said.
However, NATO allies are still opposed to Russia’s recognition of the two Georgian breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.
Lavrov praised US President Barack Obama’s intention to freeze the strategic missile defence plan in Poland and the Czech Republic. He said Russia hopes a dialogue with Washington would lead to a result that is acceptable to the European countries as well as the US and Moscow.