Piece in Europe is more important than existing contradictions

“NATO and Russia need each other as partners as never they did before”, said FRG Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel during her speech in Berlin at the 17th Congress on European security and defence. “It would be a signal of political wisdom from the NATO’s side to demonstrate the will to close cooperation with Russia”, - added Ms Merkel. In the course of the theme she also suggested developing a new strategic policy for NATO instead of the one that have been existing for 10 years already.

“NATO and Russia need each other as partners as never they did before”, said FRG Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel during her speech in Berlin at the 17^th Congress on European security and defence. “It would be a signal of political wisdom from the NATO’s side to demonstrate the will to close cooperation with Russia”, - added Ms Merkel. In the course of the theme she also suggested developing a new strategic policy for NATO instead of the one that have been existing for 10 years already.

This statement was said against the recent sharp cooling of the relations between the Alliance and Russia due to the Russian hostilities in the Georgian -Ossetia conflict. We would remind that the above mentioned contradictions resulted in the revocation of another session of the Russian-NATO Council.

Under the circumstances Ms Merkel supported the idea about the development of a new strategic policy of NATO that would replace the decade-old policy. This policy will be the subject of the discussions at the anniversary 60^th alliance session that will take place in April in 2009 in Strasburg.

During her speech In Berlin the Chancellor of Germany pointed out that now the activities of the alliance must correspond to new tasks and new challenges sent to the world community: the optimization of the territorial defence and further fight against international terrorism.

We point out that Germany together with France traditionally hold a loyal position in the reference to the plans of the Alliance that are perceived by Moscow most painfully. Thus mainly owing to the efforts of Berlin and Paris, Washington didn’t manage to grant Ukraine and Georgia the status of the candidate member to the Alliance. Besides Berlin repeatedly oppose other American initiatives in Europe as for example the US plans about the placement of the elements of the anti missile defence system in Poland and Czech Republic.

Besides, Germany demonstrates the ability to abstract away from the existent contradictions with Moscow for the sake of the further dialogue. We would remind that in October of the current year on the forum “Petersburg dialogue” Angela Merkel proposed Russia to build new and trust relationship. According to her in order to avoid crunches the world community should preventively discuss territorial regional problems. At the same time President of Russia Dmitri Medvedev expressed confidence that the relations between Russia and Germany appear to be “the factor of stability of the whole euroatlantic space” and defined the world crisis as the today’s major problem that fell upon the financial markets.