Russia's military ties

CORFU, Greece — NATO and Russia agreed to resume military ties Saturday in their first high-level meeting since Russia’s war with Georgia disrupted relations 10 months ago.

NATO’s outgoing Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer announced that the NATO-Russia Council, set up in 2002 to improve ties between the former Cold War rivals, was operational again.

Relations between the alliance and the Russian military were frozen after the five-day Georgian war last August.

Although political ties have thawed considerably over the past five months, there had been no formal military contacts since the war began.

The resumption of talks means NATO and Russia can cooperate on a range of security issues, including Afghanistan and continuing efforts to fight piracy, terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met his counterparts from NATO’s 28 member nations on the Greek island of Corfu ahead of a broader informal meeting of ministers from the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.


Russian ties remained
De Hoop Scheffer described the talks as "open and constructive, which means we did not try to paper over our differences on Georgia, for example. But we agreed not to allow those agreements to bring the NRC to a halt.”
Despite last year’s disruption of ties with NATO, Russia has continued cooperating with individual NATO nations such as the U.S., France or Germany by allowing them to use Russia’s rail network and aerial corridors to resupply international forces in Afghanistan, and its navy has worked with NATO warships on their joint anti-piracy patrols.


by the associated press