BRUSSELS. Dec 1 (Interfax) – The opponents of development of Russia-NATO relations have made an attempt to underestimate the importance of the ministerial meeting within the framework of the NATO- Russia Council, which is scheduled for December 4, Russian envoy at NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, told Interfax on Tuesday.
“We need to state a sad fact: there are still influential forces in NATO, which demonstrate a lack of any political will to develop relations with Russia,” Rogozin said.
Rogozin said an unsanctioned meeting of the NATO-Russia Council took place on Tuesday morning at the initiative of NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, where an attempt was made to reach agreements on a number of important documents. However, the attempt failed.
“The actions taken by some delegations in the NATO-Russia Council have in effect cast doubt on the filling of the upcoming ministerial meeting with real content,” Rogozin said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is among the people expected to take part in the upcoming meeting, Rogozin said.
Rogozin said the participants in the meeting held on Tuesday morning tried to discuss three documents. “The first one was a draft instruction to begin a survey of general threats, the second was a program of the NATO-Russia Council for 2010, and the third one is related to the improvement of the NATO-Russia Council and the modernization of its work,” Rogozin said.
Russia had serious question about the most recent version of the texts,” Rogozin said. “The thing is that, for example, some delegations are trying to ‘kill’ our proposals on further work of the NATO-Russia Council, mainly, the areas in which Russia tried to solidify cooperation with NATO at the needed level,” Rogozin said.
Rogozin said he has asked his colleagues in NATO to include in the text missing basic elements relating to the activities of the NATO-Russia Council. “Nevertheless, some delegations, primarily the Canadian one and those who supported it, have blocked the adoption of all the documents submitted to the ministerial level, that is, to the December 4 meeting,” he aid.
Rogozin said he still hopes the NATO general secretary will take additional measures “to convince skeptics to keep the ministerial meeting from being objectless.”
