MOSCOW. Dec 6 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia-NATO contacts have to be accompanied by actual military cooperation, according to a statement issued by an international conference entitled "Russia- NATO: Cooperation Prospects after the Prague Summit".
The event is taking place at the Metropol Hotel in Moscow on Friday.
"The main conclusion Russia has drawn from the Prague summit's decision is that NATO remains a crucial, but not the single international organization in charge of ensuring international military security. This means, first and foremost, the need for further consolidation of the political dialogue within the Russia-NATO Council," the statement reads.
Contrary to pessimistic forecasts, the Prague summit outlined the program of dramatic transformation for the alliance, authors of the statement believe. "It approved the U.S. proposal to create NATO quick-response force, a kind of task force that can be deployed in any place on the globe within short terms, by the end of 2006. European nations that are to provide 80 to 90 percent of units for the force, accepted the U.S. proposal fearing that erosion of the alliance will become irreversible otherwise," the statement reads.
Sergei Rogov, director of the Institute of the United States and Canada, told Interfax-Military News Agency that "as there is no direct threat to NATO members, it is necessary to concentrate on accomplishing collective security missions, not collective defense missions." "NATO is taking care of both functions at the moment. And this tendency is alarming. This dialectic contradiction is coming into the spotlight," he said.
The two-day conference is being attended by more than 100 policy-makers, military attaches, diplomats, businessmen, and members of government and public organizations from over ten countries.