Czech Foreign Minister: Russia and NATO should strive to return the negotiating tables – International panorama
PRAGUE, November 30. / TASS /. The North Atlantic Alliance and Russia should strive to return to the negotiating table. This opinion was expressed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic Jakub Kulganek in an interview with the newspaper published on Tuesday. Mlada fronta DNES, timed to coincide with the beginning of the meeting of the heads of the foreign affairs agencies of the North Atlantic Alliance in Riga.
“Our [НАТО] the main objective is to reduce tensions in the Eastern European region. Russia should have abandoned unnecessary provocations. It will be difficult, but at the same time we must strive for arguments to restore the dialogue, “Kulganek noted.
The North Atlantic Alliance, he believes, is open for dialogue with the Russian Federation. For two and a half years on the initiative of Russia, according to Kulganek, a meeting of the Russia-NATO Council has not been held.
As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on October 31 in Rome following the summit of the G20 countries, Russia has no information that NATO is going to establish contacts with Moscow. Lavrov agrees that the facts indicate a reluctance to use NATO with Russia. According to him, while the Russia-NATO Council was still working, the alliance “only wanted to teach life” to Russia, demanding to convene a meeting of the council each time to “discuss Ukraine.” As Lavrov admits, NATO’s entire interest was “in whipping up propaganda and putting pressure on the Russian Federation.”
On October 6, NATO announced a reduction in the size of the Russian mission with the organization from 20 to 10 people, eight diplomats had their accreditation revoked, and two more vacancies were abolished. The alliance gave Russian diplomats until the end of October to leave Brussels. On October 18, Lavrov announced that the Russian Federation would suspend the work of its NATO permanent mission from the beginning of November after the North Atlantic Alliance revoke the accreditation of the Russian permanent mission staff. In addition, the activities of the Military Mission and the NATO Information Office in Moscow were suspended.