Moscow - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will outline his
proposal for a new 'Euro-Atlantic security architecture' at an
EU-Russia summit in Nice on Friday, a top Kremlin aide said
Wednesday.
Medvedev first revived the Perestroika idea of a new security
system 'from Vancouver to Vladivostok' in his first foreign policy
address in June. Western diplomats say they are open to the idea, but
that the concept remains vague.
'One of the main topics at the summit will be talks on the Russian
president's proposal to develop a new legally-binding form on a
common European security,' Medvedev's foreign policy advisor Sergei
Prikhodko told new agency Interfax on Wednesday.
The comments came after Medvedev declared Russia would site
short-range Iskander missiles in its European enclave of Kaliningrad
to counter US missile defence plans - tipping the scales for security
to figure high on the summit agenda.
Prikhodko said Medvedev would also inform European partners of
what Russia says are contingency plans against the threat to its
security if the US goes ahead with deployment of elements of a
missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb, who chairs the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said Wednesday
in Moscow that the OSCE was open to Russia's security proposal.
'Today, the world is becoming multipolar and many international
institutions cannot cope with the new challenges in the security
sphere,' Stubb said at a news conference after two-days of meetings
with Russian leaders.
'That is why the Russian initiative holds now special
significance.'
He added the new security system will be discussed at a foreign
ministers' meeting of OSCE member states in Helsinki the first week
of December.
The proposal seems to be provoked by NATO's enlargement into
Eastern Europe and stoked by the West's general condemnation of
Russia's war with Georgia in August.
In a speech detailing the plan in Evian last month, Medvedev said:
'the real issue is that NATO is bringing its military infrastructure
right up to our borders and is drawing new dividing lines in Europe
... It is only natural that we should see this as action directed
against us.'
Prikhodko on Wednesday called the security architecture an 'arch'
that would establishes uniform 'rules of the game' for all states.
The system should do away with 'double-standards' and the
'isolation' of states, he said.
European leader froze relations with Russia in protest over its
occupation of Georgia following the five-day conflict and amid fears
that war over Georgia's separatist could set a precedent for another
post-Soviet state and aspiring NATO member, Ukraine.
But the keynote result of the EU-Russia summit Friday is to be a
timeline for re-starting talks on a new partnership agreement between
the EU and its largest neighbor.
EU experts note that in the past Finland has been instrumental in
pushing forward the bloc's relations with Russia beacuse of its close
proximity and long-standing ties with Moscow, even in Soviet times.
As a non-NATO member state, Finland is in a 'neutral' position to
raise discussion of Medvedev's security plan with fellow EU-member
states, Russian officials said Wednesday.
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