Russia skeptical on NATO ties

MOSCOW, May 31 (UPI) -- Russia wants to maintain its relations with NATO but is skeptical about their prospects, a senior Moscow diplomat said Wednesday.

Sergei Ryabkov, director of the Foreign Ministry Department for European Cooperation, told RIA Novosti that the U.S.-led alliance was not respecting Russian concerns in its decision-making.

"We draw our own conclusions from that, and are not euphoric about prospects for relations. But (we) do not intend to scale down cooperation, which is of benefit to us," he told a discussion group on Russian-NATO relations Wednesday at the news agency's Moscow headquarters.

Ryabkov said Russia would not cut off its ties with the Brussels-based alliance and wanted to maintain cooperation with it. But he said NATO's position on the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty remained a significant stumbling block as NATO nations followed an earlier version of the treaty while Moscow insisted on compliance with a later version of it.

"Russia has ratified the adapted CFE Treaty, which replaced an agreement reached at the end of the Cold War between NATO and the Eastern Bloc to curb the arms race, but of the countries that initially signed the pact, no NATO members have yet ratified it, demanding that Russia first withdraw from Soviet-era bases in Georgia and Moldova under the Istanbul Agreements," RIA Novosti said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the Kremlin could suspend its compliance with the CFE unless NATO nations acted to implement it. Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said in May Moscow had stopped giving NATO members information about movements of its military forces within its borders as compliance with the CFE demanded.

The row over the CFE reflects the growing tensions between Russia on one side and NATO and the United States on the other.