CORFU, Greece — NATO and Russia agreed to resume military ties Saturday in their first high-level meeting since Russia’s war with Georgia disrupted relations 10 months ago.
NATO’s outgoing secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, announced that the so-called NATO-Russia Council, a panel set up in 2002 to improve ties between the former Cold War rivals, was operational again.
“It was my ambition to leave to my successor an NRC that is up and running,” said de Hoop Scheffer, whose term as secretary-general ends Aug. 1.
“After the meeting which just ended, I have achieved that aim,” he said, “because there was clearly a sense in that meeting that the NRC, which had been in neutral . . . is now back in gear. We also agreed to restart the military-to-military contacts.”
Relations between the alliance and the Russian military were frozen after the five-day Georgian war in August. Although political ties have thawed considerably over the past five months, there had been no formal military contacts since then.
The resumption of talks means NATO and Russia can cooperate on a range of security issues, including Afghanistan and efforts to fight piracy, terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met his counterparts from NATO’s 28 member nations on the western Greek island of Corfu ahead of a broader informal meeting of ministers from the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
