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NATO foreign ministers start meeting in Brussels
December 6, 2001
AFP

NATO foreign ministers opened a two-day meeting in Brussels to explore new ways to combat global terrorism and fine-tune the transatlantic alliance's ties with Russia.

Officials said the 19 foreign ministers, including US Secretary of State Colin Powell, planned to issue a special, strongly-worded communique making anti-terrorism a NATO priority for the first time.

Just one day after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the 19 NATO allies invoked, for the first time ever, the article in their treaty commmiting them to defend each other.

During talks on Friday with their Russian counterpart Ivan Ivanov, the NATO foreign ministers will also see how NATO might benefit from the current thaw in East-West relations and fine-tune the alliance's formal ties with Russia.

Russia and NATO officially buried their Cold War differences with a historic May 1997 "founding act," only to see relations strained badly during NATO's 78-day air war against Yugoslavia over Kosovo in 1999.

Since the September 11 attacks, however, US-Russia relations -- and by extension, NATO-Russia relations -- are back on a much better footing, and the allies want to see how they might build on the improved climate.

"The last two years have seen a relationship of increasing trust, dialogue and engagement between NATO and Russia. This has received added impetus from the events of September 11," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in a press release

"NATO foreign ministers will consider today (Thursday) how to further strengthen and deepne the relationship," Straw added.

"The government has recently shared its ideas with NATO allies and Russia for closer co-operation in the fight against terrorism and in peace support operations, in the Balkans and elsewhere," the foreign secretary said.

"Our goal is a new forum to take this forward," he added.

Moscow has been deeply opposed to some NATO projects, especially plans to decide at a summit in Prague next November to invite Russia's former Baltic satellite states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to join.

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