NEW YORK. Jan 14 (Interfax-AVN) -- Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has said there are problems in cooperation between Russia and NATO countries.
"There are some problematic issues in our cooperation," Ivanov told the non-governmental council on international relations in New York on Thursday.
"There are various processes around Russia, and some of them can be interpreted as threatening our security. We are partners with NATO, but we see no sense in enlargement of the alliance as well as in creating anti-missile defense," he said.
"We want these processes to develop transparently, not like it was when the Baltic states were admitted to NATO, and airspace patrolling by several warplanes started right in the first days. Is there anything happening in this region that threatens Russian or NATO security?" Ivanov stressed.
He said that Russia and NATO have different approaches to ratification of the adapted Treaty on the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. "By the way, Russia and several other states have already ratified the Treaty, while NATO keeps on insisting on artificial links between the ratification and compliance with the Istanbul agreements as far as Georgia and Moldova are concerned," Ivanov said.
"We must admit openly that we have failed to reach a higher level of combating terrorism. At the same time, we face a common dangerous enemy that is capable of destroying the entire strategic security system in the world," he noted.
The minister explained that "the practice of applying double standards to assessing the terrorist threat, condonation of terrorists, their accomplices and sponsors continues."