MOSCOW, June 7 (AVN) - Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov will leave for Brussels on Thursday afternoon to attend a session of the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council at the defence ministers' level, Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, head of the main international co-operation department in Ivanov's ministry, told the Military News Agency.
The session will take place at the NATO headquarters under the auspices of the traditional conference of the NATO defence ministers. In addition to it, Ivanov is expected to hold a series of bilateral meetings with his western counterparts, including US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld.
It will be the first meeting of Ivanov and Rumsfeld and it will have a great importance for further co-operation between the Russian and US Armed Forces, Ivashov said. The main issues for discussion will be bilateral co-operation and related problems of strategic security, NATO's eastward expansion and the situation in the Balkans, especially in Kosovo and Macedonia where Albanian guerrillas effectively wage a large-scale ware against regular Macedonian army units.
Ivashov did not rule out that the US party would try to clear up Moscow's stance regarding the military-technical co-operation programme proposed by the US Department of Defence in 2000. According to it, the department would like to purchase some samples of Russian weapons, including S-300PMU-1 long-range surface-to-air missile systems, Buk and Tor-M-1 medium- and short-range surface-to-air missile systems, and T-90S tanks.
"Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov has recently spoken on the matter in Budapest and said that Moscow was not planning to exchange the 1972 Anti-Missile Defence Treaty for sales of arms to the United States, and this stance is unlikely to be changed," Ivashov stressed.