NATO-Russia Council to meet before summit in Warsaw - Stoltenberg
BRUSSELS. May 20 (Interfax) - The NATO-Russia Council will meet before the alliance's summit in Warsaw, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said before the second day of the meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.
The NATO foreign ministers discussed relations with Russia at their working dinner on Thursday evening, he said. The foreign ministers agreed on a dual approach: robust defense and deterrence on one hand and political dialogue on the other. According to Stoltenberg, this was definitively stated by all ministers engaged in the discussion and was the single position of NATO. There are no inconsistencies here, he said. Robust defense will provide predictability, he said, adding that this would be the foundation for political interaction with Russia. Stoltenberg was speaking at a joint press briefing with EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini.
He noted that practical cooperation with Russia had been suspended but that NATO had decided to keep channels open to political dialogue. The NATO-Russia Council is the political dialogue platform. In the words of Stoltenberg, everyone agrees that this platform is necessary for providing transparency and predictability, for strengthening risk reduction mechanisms, and for avoiding dangerous situations and incidents that may run out of control, like the downing of a Russian plane in Turkey or unsafe behavior of Russian planes in the Baltic Sea.