NATO head urges new start with Russia

MOSCOW: NATO and Russia need to embark on a new relationship, the head of the Western military alliance said on Wednesday on a trip to Moscow to lobby for Russian help in Afghanistan.
The visit by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen will pave the way for a summit of the 28-nation alliance in Lisbon on Nov. 19-20. Russian President Dmitry Medevedev has accepted an invitation to attend the meeting, where NATO will work out a new strategic plan.
“The meeting in Lisbon is a real opportunity to turn a new page, to bury the ghosts of the past,” Rasmussen told a news briefing in the Russian capital. Medvedev has said Russia needs more clarity on its role in European security matters.
NATO has called on Russia to expand supply routes to Afghanistan and provide Afghan soldiers with Russian helicopters and counter-narcotics training.
Rasmussen said the issues would be discussed in Lisbon.
“We will hopefully make a decision on enhanced cooperation on counter-narcotics training, a broadened transit agreement and also progess on implementing the helicopter package,” said Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister. NATO has stressed that cooperation does not mean Russian forces being deployed in Afghanistan.
Moscow is still haunted by the defeat of Soviet forces which invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and quit in humiliation a decade later. It was unclear whether Rasmussen would speak with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, seen as Russia’s key decision maker.
Russian cooperation on Afghanistan would be an important victory for U.S. President Barack Obama, weakened by Tuesday’s mid-term elections in which Republicans captured control of the House of Representatives from the Democrats.
The United States considers NATO cooperation with Russia crucial to Obama’s plans to ‘reset’ relations with Moscow, which sank to a post-Cold War low during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Putin.
Ties between NATO and Russia were similarly strained following Moscow’s brief war with pro-Western Georgia in 2008.
Moscow still views its old adversary NATO with deep suspicion and the Kremlin watched with dismay as NATO expanded towards Russia’s borders by adding former Eastern Bloc countries after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. NATO also seeks to gain Russia’s cooperation on a proposed European missile defence system to counter what it sees as a potential threat from Iran, but Moscow fears this could negate its own strategic arsenal.