MUNICH. Feb 3 (Interfax) - A deficit of strategic vision and confidence is still in place in security relations on the European continent, and the parties have still not overcome the phobias of the past era and the inclination to view things through the friend-or-foe prism, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.
While military confrontation on the European continent has become unthinkable these days, some NATO countries are again speaking about a threat from the East, which is at least perplexing, Lavrov said.
He pointed out that NATO is beefing up its military infrastructure on its eastern borders and conducts maneuvers based on a scenario invoking Article 5 of the Washington Treaty from time to time.
Russia has been encouraged to believe that a European missile defense system would not pose any threat to it, despite numerous substantiated judgments by Russian, European and U.S. experts indicating just the opposite, Lavrov said.
The European segment of the global missile defense system is part of the U.S. strategic arsenal and an inseparable component of strategic stability, Lavrov said. When a nuclear shield is added to a nuclear sword, the temptation to use these offensive and defensive resources may become too strong depending on who may come to power in the country possessing these resources, Lavrov said.
Russia is not evading dialogue, but it does not see any changes in its partners' positions in the course of this dialogue, he said.
The principle of indivisible security should become a universal legal norm and oblige any country to take into account and respect legitimate interests of all of its neighbors in the Euro-Atlantic space, Lavrov said.
He described this as a military-political interpretation of the well-known moral imperative that one should treat others in a way they would like others to treat them.