Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (From Russia Blog)Russian FM Sees Roadblocks To Future Cooperation With NATO -- Yahoo News/AFP
MOSCOW (AFP) – Normalising NATO-Russia ties will be "extremely difficult" and will require revisiting the issue of the Russia-Georgia war, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview published Saturday.
"Before us lies an extremely difficult process of normalisation, in which it will be necessary to return to a discussion of the Caucasus crisis, which our partners declined to have in August," Lavrov told the Interfax news agency.
Earlier this month NATO agreed to gradually resume high-level talks with Russia, frozen in August to protest Russia's war with Georgia, a Western ally that has sought to join the military alliance.
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My Comment: The Russian FM has accurately pinpointed the differences in policy between NATO and the EU. More to the point .... he is stressing the differences that now exist between the U.S. and most members of the EU.
The Russian Government is also still smarting from the Georgian conflict. They feel that they had the moral right to stop Georgian aggression, and they want to legitimize this conflict by having the EU recognize the two breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
They are going to have to wait a very long time before that happens ... if it happens.