VILNIUS. April 21 (Interfax-AVN) - NATO feels positive about the latest Russian proposals in negotiations with Georgia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a Thursday news conference in Vilnius after the NATO-Russia Council session.
"We have informed NATO about the Russian-Georgian negotiations on military issues and the latest Russian proposals made at the negotiations. The proposals received a positive response," Lavrov said.
He said the NATO-Russia Council also discussed the Georgian-Ossetian and Georgian-Abkhaz settlement.
Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zourabichvili will visit Moscow on April 25 to continue negotiations on the pullout of Russian military bases from Georgia, Lavrov said.
He thinks that the position of the Georgian negotiators will be similar to the one Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili presented to the Russian minister in Tbilisi this February.
Lavrov confirmed that Russian political commitments concerning the withdrawal of military bases from Georgia and Moldova had nothing to do with the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE).
"These agreements are unrelated to the CFE. They were reached in a bilateral format," he said.
"Legally, all the CFE member countries must ratify the adapted treaty in line with their commitments," he said.
Moscow said earlier that new NATO member countries were dragging out our ratification of the adapted treaty and linking it to the Istanbul agreements between Russia, Georgia and Moldova.