NATO and Russia agreed on Saturday to cooperate on missile defense and other security issues, and hailed a new start in relations strained since Russia’s military intervention in Georgia in 2008.
Russia also agreed at talks in Lisbon to boost its support for the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan by allowing more alliance supplies through its territory and the two sides agreed to establish a fund to maintain helicopters for Afghan forces.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the former Cold War enemies had made a “historic” step forward in putting aside the problems of the past.
“Today marks a fresh start in NATO-Russia relations,” Rasmussen said. “For the first time in history, NATO countries and Russia will be cooperating to defend themselves. Our security is indivisible. We share important interests and face the same threats to our common security.”
Medvedev said a period of strained relations had been overcome and added: “We have large-scale plans, we will be working in all areas, including European missile defense.”
The two sides agreed to revive a project aimed at protecting NATO and Russian armed forces from missile attacks that had been suspended after Russia’s Georgia intervention.
They also agreed to conduct a joint study on how Russian could join a new system designed to protect Europe and North America from long-range missiles fired from the Middle East.
This new NATO system will link existing European anti-missile systems to radars and interceptors the US plans to deploy in the Mediterranean, Romania, Poland and possibly Turkey.
NATO officials say the protective umbrella will be deployed in stages from next year until 2020, when it will be capable of intercepting long-range missiles and ICBMs.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama and Medvedev held an unplanned meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit in an effort to build confidence between the two nations, a White House official announced.
“They were able to go aside into a room by themselves and talk for 15 to 20 minutes,” White House spokesman Ben Rhodes told reporters aboard Air Force One before it landed in Washington late on Saturday.
“It was informal, it wasn’t planned,” he said.
Only a translator accompanied the two leaders at their impromptu summit, US officials said.
Rhodes said Obama and Medvedev had developed what he called “a very strong rapport.”
“They like each other. They like to see each other,” the spokesman said. “They like to get along and consult about things.”
According to administration officials, the meeting was initiated by Obama, who later described it as “very cordial.”
Obama also talked to Medvedev about his earlier meeting with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Georgia fought a five-day war with Russia in August 2008 when Russian troops poured into the country after fighting broke out between Georgian and separatist forces in South Ossetia.
One of the officials quoted Obama as saying that the meeting with Medvedev was aimed at reducing “misunderstandings that can lead to unintended consequences.”
The two leaders also discussed the new START nuclear arms treaty with Russia and the chances for its early ratification by the US Senate.
“They had a very cordial conversation about it,” an administration official said, adding that Medvedev expressed confidence “in the president getting it done.”
The treaty — signed by Medvedev and Obama at an elaborate ceremony in Prague in April — restricts each nation to a maximum of 1,550 deployed warheads, a cut of about 30 percent from a limit set in 2002.
The agreement, a top Obama foreign policy initiative, replaces a previous accord that lapsed in December last year and also requires ratification by Russia’s lower house, the Duma.
Senate Republicans have said they need to be sure that the US nuclear arsenal will be modernized and that the treaty will not hamper US missile defense efforts — but some acknowledged privately that they did not want to hand Obama a major diplomatic victory before the elections.
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