NATO Secretary General calls for genuine NATO-Russia strategic partnership
Speaking at the 50th Munich Security Conference on Saturday (1 February), NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen outlined several key steps to boost efforts to create a genuine strategic partnership between NATO and Russia. “We should be more ambitious. We should be bolder in addressing our challenges, because we share fundamental interests,” the Secretary General said. He stressed: "Nobody wants to return to the dividing lines and hostility of the past, so let's stop using the words and ways of the past and move forwards."
Speaking on a panel together with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, Mr Fogh Rasmussen also made clear that Ukraine should have the freedom to choose its own path without external pressure.
On the margins of the conference, the NATO Secretary General also had bilateral meetings with the German minister of defence Dr Ursula von der Leyen, the Prime Minister of Montengro Milo Djukanovic, the Swiss foreign minister Didier Burkhalter, who is the acting President of the Swiss Confederation and Chairperson-in-Office of the OSCE, and the Libyan foreign minister Mohamed Ali Abdulaziz.