Medvedev to discuss new security architecture at EU-Russia summit

Nov 12, 2008, 14:35 GMT

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.