NATO, Russian ministers meet amid missile-shield tensions

Dec 8, 2011, 8:35 GMT

Brussels - NATO foreign ministers came together with their Russian counterpart Thursday, in a bid to tone down mounting tensions over a missile defence shield the military alliance wants to deploy in Europe.

'There will only be security on our continent with Russia, not against Russia,' German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said ahead of the meeting in Brussels. 'The current tougher language shouldn't overshadow the fact that we have good cooperation in practice.'

'We will continue discussing (these issues) in a patient and calm way,' British Foreign Minister William Hague added. 'NATO's offer is on the table to Russia and we would like to see practical cooperation on missile defence go ahead.'

However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had complained a day earlier that his country's 'legitimate demands are not taken into account.'

Russia wants guarantees that the shield - intended to ward off missile threats from the Middle East - will not be used against its missiles and that it will be involved in the planning.

President Dmitry Medvedev stepped up the pressure last month, when he ordered army commanders to prepare to deploy ballistic missiles to an enclave next to Lithuania and Poland to counter the NATO shield - in a move that Hague on Thursday described as 'disappointing.'

Lavrov declined to take questions from the press upon his arrival at the NATO headquarters.

Westerwelle admitted that there had been 'mistakes' made at the start of the debate over the missile shield, with Russia being 'involved too little in the discussions.'

But NATO has since repeatedly insisted in public statements that Russia was not a target of the shield. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe expressed hope on Wednesday that, 'if we keep hammering in the nail, it will eventually go in.'

'As we face the same threat, it makes sense to cooperate in defending against it,' NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at the start of Thursday's meeting. 'A NATO-Russia strategic partnership is not nice to have, it is a must-have.'

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