First session of Russia-NATO Council at the level of defence ministers to be held on June 6

The first session of the Russia-NATO Council at the level of defence ministers is scheduled for Thursday, June 6th, in Brussels, a high-placed NATO diplomat told journalists.

According to him, it will be devoted to issues of giving specific content to the programme of cooperation between Russia and the North Atlantic Alliance, adopted at the Rome summit.

The meeting of defence ministers of the 19 NATO countries will also be held to discuss problems of increasing the military possibilities of the alliance, the purchase of new armaments, and cooperation in the military sphere. Russia will not be represented at it. The military possibilities are the sphere of joint actions of the NATO countries, and we do not work together with Russia in this field, the diplomat said.

The Russia-NATO Council, he stressed, is a separate, although a very important cooperation project in the security sphere. The West pins great hopes on it. At the Rome summit on May 28th, the heads of state and government gave concrete instructions to their diplomats and the military for achieving success in the realisation of this project and making it a unique form of collaboration between Russia and NATO. Within its framework, the NATO member countries will be able, together with Russia, to work on a coordinated range of problems: the struggle against terrorism, non-proliferation of mass destruction weapons, military cooperation in peacekeeping operations, the search and rescue work at see, and emergency civil planning.