MOSCOW. Nov 11 (Interfax-AVN) - Moscow hopes that NATO will fulfill its promises not to deploy military forces on the territory of its new members.
"We proceed from the fact that any actions should not contradict the Russia-NATO Founding Act and the statement made by the NATO Council on December 8, 1998. These documents contain the alliance's commitments to abstain from additional deployments on the territory of the new members," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview published by the Romanian Ziua newspaper.
The text of the interview was published on the ministry's web site on Friday.
"We believe that in future all legal and political commitments made by NATO in the area of arms control should be observed," Lavrov said.
The minister said that the United States informs Russia on plans to reorganize its military presence abroad.
"This corresponds with the goal of maintaining a positive political climate on the Euro-Atlantic territory," the minister said.
Speaking about the situation in Transcaucasia and Central Asia, Lavrov said that "only full scale and equal cooperation, as well as the creation of integration links, will allow reaching qualitative progress in solving the social, economical and ecological problems of the region and fighting more actively terrorism, extremism, drugs trafficking, illegal migration and other threats to stability."