ATHENS - As the Russia-NATO Council met at the level of Foreign Ministers on 4 December in Brussels for the first time after the five-day war in the Caucasus last year, Russia’s proposal for a new security treaty stretching from Vancouver to Vladivostok was already the topic of discussion during most of last week.
The Russian proposal ensures foreign military assistance to a country under attack. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev first called for a legally-binding security pact in Berlin in June 2008. Meeting in October 2008 in the French resort city of Evian, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Medvedev discussed the issue of European security and proposed to the Russian president that the framework should be that of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told a roomful of reporters on 1 December after a lunch of OSCE ministers attending their 17th annual meeting in Athens.
Foreign ministers from 46 of the 56-nation OSCE, which includes the United States and Russia, gathered in Athens on December 1-2, 2009, to look at developing a stronger security policy for Europe. At a previous OSCE meeting on the Greek island of Corfu in June 2009, many expressed doubt about Russia’s plans for a pan-European security pact, saying it should not undermine the role of either NATO or the OSCE. At that point, OSCE foreign ministers carried out discussions on the Corfu Process, which aims to tackle European security challenges with concrete steps.
On November 29, 2009, two days before the Athens OSCE summit, Medvedev distributed the draft text of Russia’s security agreement. The 14-point European security pact aims at finally breaking with the legacy of the Cold War and would restrict its ability to use military force unilaterally if the US and Europe agreed to do the same. “The time has again come for Europe to change, there is a need to take decisive steps to overcome remaining dividing lines in the Euro- Atlantic region,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told fellow OSCE foreign ministers in Athens.
Russia’s proposal for a new security treaty should be taken seriously as the OSCE pushes forward the Corfu Process, Kouchner said. “We have just received two days ago (November 29) the framework of a treaty coming out from our Russian friends,” Kouchner told reporters. “It was, of course, the topic of our working lunch. Is it possible to have this treaty as a working document or is it the end of the Corfu Process? Let my answer clearly, this is not the end at all,” he said, adding that Corfu’s perspectives are essential in order to consider this Russian paper in a positive way. “We have to take Medvedev’s proposal very carefully. France has already done so,” he said. The Russian proposal reflects exactly the issues that concern the Russian side and the issue was if the proposal was going to block or not the Corfu Process. Lavrov himself said that the Corfu process should continue,” Kouchner said, adding that Russian could offer valuable assistance in several problems, including Afghanistan.
The French Foreign Minister acknowledged that “Russia doesn’t feel comfortable in this environment - the environment we know with its borders changing from the time of Mr. (Mikhail) Gorbachev and Mr. (Boris) Yeltsin. We must understand that Russia feels certain hostility in terms of its environment, but Russia is our neighbor and we have to make sure this does not happen.”
Wrapping up the OSCE 17th annual meeting in Athens on 2 December, Lavrov canceled a scheduled press conference “for technical reasons”, and then flew to Rome where Medvedev met with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on 3 December. Berlusconi welcomed Russia’s proposed European security pact, saying Italy would discuss it with other European Union member states and the country’s NATO allies. “We have a strong appreciation for this initiative,” Berlusconi said at a joint news conference with Medvedev in Rome. “We are studying this document which we believe is very interesting,” Berlusconi added.
But a day later, Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini clarified at the alliance’s headquarters on 4 December that Russia’s proposal cannot be used to sideline NATO. Italy is seen as one of NATO’s more pro-Russian members, making its reservations on the security issue especially significant. “In itself it’s a good proposal ... but of course the first precondition to address the issue is that this cannot be seen as an alternative to NATO, which remains the pillar for international and Euro-Atlantic security,” Frattini said ahead of talks with his NATO and Russian counterparts.