Putin asks NATO to help build trust

MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin criticized NATO’s “mechanical expansion” eastward yesterday, but told the alliance’s new chief that international security would be improved by a true partnership with Russia.

Mr. Putin set a cooperative tone in a Kremlin meeting with Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who made his first visit to Russia as NATO secretary-general less than two weeks after the alliance expanded into the former Soviet Union by adding Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as well as four other countries once part of the East Bloc.

Mr. Putin reiterated Russia’s position that NATO’s eastward march has not made the world safer, saying that “this expansion could not prevent the terrorist acts in Madrid, for example, or help us resolve the problems of the restoration of Afghanistan.”

But in a departure from past dismissals of NATO as an outdated organization, he said, “We hope the expansion will foster the strengthening of trust in Europe and around the world and will be an instrument and component in strengthening international security.

“For this, of course, it is necessary to increase the level of trust between NATO and in this case Russia,” Mr. Putin added. He called creation of the Russia-NATO council two years ago a “positive start.”

Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said he, too, was intent on boosting what he called an “essential partnership” between NATO and Russia. “It’s my personal mission to make the Russia-NATO relationship stronger during my term in office,” he told Mr. Putin.

“The problems facing us are simply too big — terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Iraq — to think that we can go it alone,” he said.

Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said the main goal of his visit was to persuade Russians that NATO — which now has fighter planes on former Soviet territory and stands within about 100 miles of Mr. Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg — is no threat.

A phone-in poll of 5,413 listeners of the Ekho Moskvy radio station underlined the uphill battle he faced, with 71 percent saying they considered NATO an aggressive bloc in relation to Russia.

Russia has expressed particular uneasiness over NATO plans to have four F-16 fighter planes stationed in Lithuania make regular flights near Russia’s border, close enough to conduct reconnaissance.

Moscow also has voiced concern about NATO members’ reluctance to ratify an amended version of the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which limits the number of troops and weapons in various parts of the continent.

The Baltic states and Slovenia, another new NATO member, are not signatories, and NATO has linked ratification with fulfillment of Russia’s 1999 pledge to pull its troops out of former Soviet republics Georgia and Moldova.

Mr. de Hoop Scheffer tried to reassure Moscow that all of NATO’s new members “have clearly stated their ambition that as soon as it is possible, they will enter and ratify the amended treaty.”