NATO and Russian diplomats were keen to find a way to revive an arms-control treaty which Russia suspended in 2007 at their first formal meeting since August's Russian-Georgian war, the alliance's spokesman said Wednesday, according to dpa. Members of the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) expressed a "shared desire" to debate ways to revive the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, and showed a "positive spirit of compromise" in discussing some of the main problems with it, James Appathurai told journalists at NATO's Brussels headquarters. They also said that the NRC should continue to discuss the treaty in the future, although the primary forum for such matters remains the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The treaty sets strict limits on the deployment of heavy weapons and attack aircraft in Europe. Russia pulled out of it in 2007 in protest at US plans to site missile-defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, both of which are NATO members. Despite the "new energy" they brought to the CFE debate, NATO members and Russia clashed over the question of a series of military exercises which NATO plans to hold in Georgia from May 6 to June 1. Ahead of the meeting, Russia had insisted that NATO call off the exercises, which it sees as a provocation in the wake of its August invasion of Georgia. NATO states retorted that the exercises were planned long before the war, and were not aimed at Russia. Those stances were unchanged in Wednesday's NRC meeting, the first since the war, Appathurai said. The NRC brings together the ambassadors of NATO's 28 member states and Russia as equal members of a single forum. Founded in 2002, it was established to ease tensions between Russia and the West following NATO's decision to expand into the Baltic states. But NATO members suspended the formal operation of the NRC in August to protest at Russia's invasion of Georgia, which is an aspirant to eventual NATO membership. On Wednesday, NRC members agreed that they should try and make the forum work better by focusing on areas where Russia and NATO can cooperate, such as Afghanistan, Appathurai said. They also discussed plans for a meeting of NRC foreign ministers, tentatively scheduled for the second half of May.
