ipping supplies to Western forces battling the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Foreign ministers from the two sides met for the first time since Russia’s five-day war with Georgia last year, taking a step in President Obama’s “reset’’ of US-Russian ties.
Western opposition to Russia’s treatment of Georgia will not “bring the whole NATO-Russia Council train to a halt,’’ said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO’s secretary general. “Russia needs NATO, and NATO needs Russia.’’
Yesterday’s meeting marked a final break with the “no business as usual’’ policy imposed by the US-led alliance after the Georgia war and set the stage for Obama’s trip to Moscow next month to solicit Russian help on arms control, Afghanistan, and containing Iran’s nuclear program.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is fighting Islamic militants in Afghanistan with roots in the rebel forces that drove out the Soviet army in the 1980s with American help.
NATO already hauls nonmilitary cargo across the Russian steppe for its 61,000 troops in Afghanistan. De Hoop Scheffer said he would not rule out Russia allowing “lethal’’ shipments as well.
The 28-nation alliance also wants Russia to send a warship back to the Mediterranean Sea to join a NATO fleet that monitors suspicious vessels. Russia pulled out of the mission when NATO suspended ties in August.
“I do hope that there will be Russian participation again,’’ De Hoop Scheffer said. A more distant prospect, he said, would be Russian involvement in NATO’s counterpiracy mission off the coast of Somalia.
Both sides remain at odds over Georgia, a would-be NATO member. Russia crushed the Georgian Army and bestowed diplomatic recognition on two breakaway territories last year, a token of Kremlin efforts to reestablish the sphere of influence that crumbled with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“All have to accept the new realities,’’ said Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister. “The decisions that have been taken by Russia after the conflict started are irreversible.’’
Russia raised the pressure on Georgia this month when it blocked the extension of international monitoring missions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two separatist enclaves. In April it granted five-year defense guarantees to both territories.
“We don’t intend to recognize the purported attempt to set up separate states within the territory of Georgia,’’ said James Steinberg, the US deputy secretary of state.
Still, Steinberg - standing in for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is recovering from an elbow injury - hailed the revived NATO-Russia forum as a place for “dialogue on areas of both common interest and areas of disagreement.’’
To forge a new bond with Russia, Obama has given less priority than his predecessor, President George W. Bush, to further expansion of NATO and construction of a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe.
On a separate track, the United States is “encouraged’’ by progress made in nuclear arms reduction talks with Russia in the run-up to Obama’s July 6 visit, Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday.
“The intent is to certainly reach that kind of agreement,’’ Mullen told Russia Today television, according to an e-mailed transcript. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, signed in 1991, will run out this year.
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