MOSCOW. Dec 13 (Interfax-AVN) - Military relations between Moscow and Paris have good prospects, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has said.
"We have good long-standing traditions in the cooperation between the two Armed Forces and very good prospects for the future," he said at a Thursday meeting with Chief-of-Staff of the French Armed Forces Jean-Pierre Kelche in Moscow.
"This is the matter of broader relations between Russia and NATO and our benevolent interest in the European security and defense institutions that are being formed," Ivanov said. "We have always called for broadening cooperation in these spheres."
Ivanov said he would have negotiations with the French defense minister during his visit to Brussels next week. He said they might discuss "the possibility of joint planning of peacekeeping operations" and the situation "in the Balkans, where things are far from simple."
As for Afghanistan, "Russia is taking part in not so much military, as the humanitarian aspect of the antiterrorist campaign in Afghanistan," Ivanov said.
"We know that country rather well and we are ready to exchange information about regional affairs with France," the minister noted. Moscow "is ready to coordinate its actions on Afghanistan with France," he said.
The interests of France and Russia on the European continent are increasingly becoming similar, Kelche said. France has always thought that Russia has an exclusively important role, he added.