Within the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO), few are interested in a return to the past, to the old borders of 1997, said on briefing January 11, US Permanent Representative to NATO Julianne Smith.
“The Alliance is not going to turn back time and return to a completely different era, when we had a completely different alliance: it was smaller and occupied a completely different territory. I think we are operating in the modern world with NATO in its current form, and hardly anyone inside NATO is interested in going back to the past, to an era when NATO looked completely different, ”she said.
This is how Smith commented on the proposal of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov to NATO to abandon the “development of the territory” of the states that joined the alliance after 1997.
In an interview with CNN, Smith also said that she did not see any particular prospects for reaching a compromise with Russia on the issue of expanding the alliance. She added that decisions on NATO expansion will be made by the alliance itself and by specific countries.
On January 10, talks between Russia and NATO on security guarantees were held in Geneva. They lasted approximately 7.5 hours. Discussions were held at the US Permanent Mission in a format closed to the press.
The next day, the Kremlin said they saw no reason for optimism after the talks. At the same time, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov noted that diplomat Sergei Ryabkov, who represented Moscow at the talks, assesses the very fact of the conversation positively.
The talks on security guarantees will be held in three stages: on January 10, a meeting was held in Geneva, on January 12, a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council will take place in Brussels, and the next day, consultations are scheduled at the Vienna platform of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
#Permanent #Representative #Smith #NATO #revert #configuration