BRUSSELS, Jan 26: Nato and Russia agreed on Monday to continue their rapprochement, with the military alliance’s secretary general likely to meet a top Russian minister next month, Nato and Russian officials said.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei “Ivanov will meet Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in Munich on Feb 6 to discuss Nato-Russia relations,” a Russian diplomat said.

The meeting, on the sidelines of an international security conference in the southern German city “will in any case be an occasion to renew political dialogue,” the diplomat said. His comments came after informal talks between Nato and Russian ambassadors in Brussels, the first meeting of its kind since before the military alliance froze official high-level contacts over Moscow’s war in Georgia.

The conflict in Georgia in August brought tense Nato-Russia ties to a head, particularly Moscow’s decision to recognise the independence of the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russia has been angered by Nato’s open-door policy in regard to former Soviet states Georgia and Ukraine, which alliance leaders have said will join one day, although a fast-track approach has been ruled out for now.

Nato allies, for their part, have expressed concern about Moscow’s decision to freeze a major Cold War arms treaty.

Nato spokesman James Appathurai said that Monday’s talks between the ambassadors, which lasted more than two hours, “were very positive. There were no recriminations from either side.” “Georgia was not the subject of any heated discussion, and no one called into question Nato-Russia relations,” he said.

He said the ambassadors “did not examine the past but turned more toward the future”, in particular their cooperation on Afghanistan. —AFP