MOSCOW. Sept 7 (Interfax) - The Russian and French foreign and defense ministers are due to meet in Paris on Tuesday.
"The ninth meeting of the Russian-French Cooperation Council with the participation of the ministers of foreign affairs and defense of the two countries will take place on September 7. As has become a tradition, the meeting participants will be received by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said in an interview posted on the ministry's website on Friday.
The ministers will discuss a Russian initiative for signing a European Security Treaty, a French proposal for creating a "Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security space," and a Russian-German proposal for setting up a European Union-Russia committee for foreign policy and security, Nesterenko said.
"A detailed analysis is also planned of the current state of and prospects for partnership between Russia and the European Union, in particular in light of forming a common space of external security and future relations between Russia and NATO, including in view of creating a new strategic concept for the alliance and putting together the agenda for the Russia-NATO Council, and preparations for a summit of the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] in Astana in December of this year," he said.
The ministers would also raise issues relating to the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, missile defenses and nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the spokesman said.
"We also anticipate a serious discussion in Paris on joint efforts in combating sea piracy. The debates on this dossier are intended to focus not only on matters of operational interaction but also on [a proposal for] creating an international mechanism for the prosecution of pirates," he said.
The ministers also plan a "comprehensive discussion on problems of the Middle East peace process, including in light of the resumption in Washington on September 2 of direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations," Nesterenko said.
"The situation in Afghanistan will also be in the focus of the ministers' attention, including at the angle of countering the drug threat emanating from Afghan territory," he said.
"The abnormal heat in central Russia in summer this year, the forest fires that it caused, the floods in Pakistan and other recent natural calamities have again demonstrated the need to urgently develop a system of international cooperation in reacting to emergency situations. These issues are also planned to be discussed, including in terms of creating pools of resources for reacting to emergency situations," Nesterenko said.