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25 Jun, 2007 06:31

Interview with Aleksandr Nikitin

Aleksandr Nikitin, a professor from the Moscow State University for International Relations, joined Russia Today to discuss the agenda of the Russia-NATO conference in St. Peterburg.

Russia Today: The ten year anniversary being acknowledged after ten years of hard work. How would you describe the state of relations between Russia and NATO?

Aleksandr Nikitin: In absence of a direct mutual strategic threat between Russia and NATO, the whole dialogue of Russia and NATO is a kind of symbolic dialogue. By talking to NATO, Russia is sending some sort of signal to the West in general about the place it wants to occupy in the European decision making, on conflict decision making and on high security issues. This is why the NATO-Russian council still mostly operates rather in the format of 26+1 than in a format of 27 that Russia always insisted to be an equal partner in this. But partially 20 working groups which were operating during many years, they improve the situation and obtain many small practical results. At the same time I would say that before 1999 the relations were moving up and up. Then it was an important crisis in 1999 in relations between Moscow and Brussels and by now we are only obtaining approximately the same level of co-operation which we had before that 1999 crisis. Obviously the most important issues right now are the potential Russia's withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty as well as Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). I guess that would be in the center of negotiations between Vladimir Putin and his Brussels's counterpart. But at the same time the area where NATO and Russia could be most mutually beneficial is conflicts, the policy towards conflict areas. For example, NATO is now responsible for post-conflict reconstruction in Afghanistan and Russia controls the rapid deployment forces of the Collective Security Treaty Organization which are to the north of the same Tajik-Afghan border. Co-operation between NATO tactics and Russian tactics in dealing with stability in Central Asia is also one of the potential areas of co-operation.

RT: It is certainly a wide range of issues that could be going to be treated but let's talk in particular about the NATO Chief meeting with Vladimir Putin. What do you feel Putin wants out of this meeting? What will he really want to drive the agenda?

A.N.: Paradoxically, Russia might want now to increase the role of NATO in discussing the nuclear policy because normally it is the U.S. who are making the most important decisions on nuclear matters but with all this potential deployment of the components of the ABM system in Europe Russia is interested not to let this process go unilaterally, by Washington's decisions only. And this is why to upgrade the issue to the level of NATO itself, NATO must have a voice in this, and then to upgrade it to the level of discussion between the U.S., NATO and Russia as three potential partners in creating the European ABM system – that is one of the most important tactics of Moscow right now. As well, of course, through lengthy process of debates around CFE treaty and INF treaty, withdrawal from two major pillars of the current international arms control regime Russia again is sending some signals to the West for which it wants some NATO reaction.

RT: How do you see these signals being interpreted?

A.N.: Well, in fact I doubt that at the final countdown Russia wants to really re-create the generation of short range and medium range missiles. Russia only wants to have good negotiation positions and start to increase the role of European nations in negotiating the joint ABM system which might be created with a participation of Russia. Russia has the technological background for this.

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