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Russia calms NATO worries over nukes

Russia on Thursday soothed NATO concerns over its nuclear posture, ruling out a policy of pre-emptive strikes and describing its former Cold War foe as a partner against new security threats.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov assured his NATO counterparts at a meeting in Colorado Springs that a new document spelling out Moscow's military doctrine did not identify the US-led alliance as offensive.

But he did say Russia was concerned about NATO deployments near its borders, including one which put alliance warplanes within three minutes' flying time of St. Petersburg, and about early warning aircraft flights along its frontier.

Asked if Moscow's doctrine differed from that of the US, which reserves the right to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively, Ivanov said: "In fact, you are right. Russia still regards nuclear weapons as a means of political deterrent."

However, he did spell out that Russia reserved the right to use pre-emptive non-nuclear force, particularly to protect ethnic Russians in states of the former Soviet Union.

Improving relations with Moscow is a key element of NATO's drive to reinvent itself to tackle terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, threats highlighted on Tuesday by a war-gaming exercise laid on for alliance defense ministers.

On the second day of their meeting on the edge of the Rocky Mountains the ministers also discussed plans to expand NATO's 5,500-strong peacekeeping force in Afghanistan beyond Kabul and into provinces roiled by feuding warlords.

NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said that the alliance would not take a decision to extend the operation until it was offered troops from allies, many of whose forces are now stretched thin by crisis management missions across the globe.

However, Ivanov was the focus of Thursday's meetings.

"Minister Sergei Ivanov said ... Russia does not have or does not seek to have a pre-emptive strategy in relation to its nuclear weapons," Robertson said.

"They don't regard NATO as being an offensive organization, they regard NATO as being a partner to Russia."

NATO ministers had wanted to quiz Ivanov on a recent defense document which reportedly said that if NATO remained a "military alliance with its existing offensive military doctrine," Russia would have to review its military posture and nuclear strategy.

"All he said was he had seen some Russian press reports and European press reports last week about this Russian strategy document and he wanted to assure us that he felt they were erroneous -- that there were no negative Russian intentions toward NATO," US envoy to NATO Nicholas Burns told reporters.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, pursuing a pro-Western policy, has softened criticism of NATO's plan to expand behind the old Iron Curtain.

However, there are still misgivings in Moscow -- particularly in the defense establishment -- about NATO's embrace of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which broke free from the Soviet Union in 1991.
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