NATO chief calls for joint missile defense with Russia

Brussels - NATO and Russia should set up a joint missile- defense screen to boost their security and mutual trust, NATO's top official said Wednesday, a week after Russia and the United States signed an historic deal on nuclear-arms control.

The question of missile defense has divided the Cold War foes ever since former US president George W Bush enraged Russia by launching plans to site interceptors in Central and Eastern Europe.

"The US and Russia now clearly see eye-to-eye on a range of security issues and we should use this new momentum to take further steps to enhance our common security.

Together, NATO and Russia should explore cooperation on missile defense," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in an online video message.

"This is the most significant step we can take to integrate Russia more fully in Euro-Atlantic security," he added. "We would develop trust and prevent hostility between NATO and Russia."

The shared system would be "a security roof which would give real security to our people," he said.

Relations between NATO and Russia have been an uneasy balance between cooperation and criticism.

The two sides work together to fight Afghan drug smuggling and their warships cooperate to combat piracy in the Gulf of Aden.

But NATO fiercely criticized Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia, while Russia sees NATO's willingness to take in former Soviet states such as Georgia and Ukraine as a direct threat to its security.

In 2008, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for a new security pact around the Northern Hemisphere to boost security and outlaw any power "enhancing its security at another's expense."

NATO states gave the proposal a cool reception, with some saying it was a Russian attempt to gain a veto over NATO enlargement.

Russian officials have yet to comment on Rasmussen's ideas.

Separately, NATO officials said that member states were to discuss ways to revive talks with Russia on limiting the deployment of conventional weapons in Europe, in a further sign of the momentum generated by the signing of the nuclear weapons treaty.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/318743,nato-chief-calls-for-joint-missile-defence-with-russia.html.