Latest update: 27/09/2008 

Russia proposes European summit on security
Russia proposes European summit on security
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the UN General Assembly Saturday that a pan-European summit was needed to create a "reliable collective system" in the wake of the recent Georgia crisis.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday proposed a pan-European summit to review a proposal to create a "reliable collective" security system in Europe.
   
Saying that the existing architecture of European security "did not pass the strength test in recent events," referring to the Georgia conflict, he told the UN General Assembly that a "pan-European summit" should take "a comprehensive look at security problems."
   
Lavrov did not say when or where this summit would be held but said its task would be to weigh a proposal made by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Berlin last June to develop "a treaty on European Security, a kind of 'Helsinki-2'."
   
The Helsinki accords were signed by 35 states in the Finnish capital in 1975 in a bid to improve relations between the Moscow-led communist bloc and the West.
   
In a major foreign policy speech in Berlin last June, Medvedev said the eastwards expansion of NATO risked "spoiling" relations between Moscow and the West "in a radical way" for years to come.
   
He proposed the creation of a sweeping new European security pact to replace Cold War-era treaties.
   
Saturday, Lavrov said the proposed treaty aimed to "create a reliable collective system that would ensure equal security for all states."
   
"It is a process involving all participants who would reaffirm their commitment to fundamental principles of international law, such as the non-use of force and peaceful settlement of disputes, sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-interference in the internal affairs, and inadmissibility of strengthening one's own security by infringing upon the security of others," he added.
   
This was a veiled attack on Washington's plan to site 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a targeting radar in the Czech Republic as part of a missile defense system already deployed in the United States, Britain and Greenland.
   
The project angers Moscow, which says the plan is a threat to its security and has threatened to respond with targeted attacks on the missile shield's future sites.
   
Russia is also furious over Western plans to include ex-Soviet republics Georgia and Ukraine in NATO. NATO reaffirmed its pledge of eventual membership for Georgia and Ukraine after the Russia-Georgia conflict last month.
   
 

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