MUNICH, Feb 7: The head of Nato on Saturday criticised Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal for a new pan-European security architecture, saying it was incompatible with Russia’s actions in Georgia.

But other leaders said Europe should be receptive to Moscow’s overtures, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy declaring flatly that modern Russia posed no military threat to Nato or the European Union.

Nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said it was difficult to take the proposal seriously when Russia was building military bases in the rebel Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

“I cannot see how we can have a serious discussion of such a new architecture in which President Medvedev himself says territorial integrity is the primary element when Russia is building bases inside Georgia,” he said.

“That cannot be ignored and that cannot be the basis of a new security architecture,” Scheffer told an audience of dignitaries from around the world at a major international security conference in Munich.

Sarkozy said Medvedev’s proposal was worth considering and insisted that the Cold War-era threat of Russian aggression against Europe had faded.

“Russia today does not constitute a military threat to the European Union and Nato,” he said, adding that Moscow had “too many internal challenges” to contemplate such military aggression.

“We should take President Medvedev at his word and ask him what his concept of pan-European security is,” the French leader said.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana also welcomed Medvedev’s proposals, calling them the “right ideas” and a starting point for further discussion.

Relations between the EU, Nato and Russia have been deeply strained since Moscow fought a brief war with Georgia in August and subsequently recognised Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.

Since the war Russia has repeatedly pushed Medvedev’s security proposal.

The plan’s details are vague but Russian officials have suggested it would replace existing agreements including the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty.

Scheffer said he understood some of Moscow’s concerns about CFE, a treaty originally signed in 1990 limiting the number of tanks and other combat vehicles stationed in Europe that Russia has criticised as outdated.

“Russia has a legitimate case to make when asking for a discussion of existing arms control treaties,” Scheffer said, referring to CFE as well as the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, a key Cold War-era nuclear disarmament pact.

He also signalled that Nato and Russia could cooperate on another contentious area, missile defence. “Real trans-Atlantic cooperation on missile defence including Russia is very doable”, Scheffer said.

Moscow has reacted furiously to US plans to site interceptor missiles in Poaland and an anti-missile radar in the Czech Republic.

It offered to let Washington to use radars in southern Russia and Azerbaijan as part of an international missile shield, but the offers made little headway under the outgoing administration of US President George W. Bush.

The Nato chief voiced concern about Kyrgyzstan’s decision this week to close an airbase used to support the Nato mission in Afghanistan, which was widely seen as a move made under Russian pressure.

“I am also concerned that the Kyrgyz president announces in Moscow that Manas airbase will be closed to the United States,” Scheffer said.

He called the move “at the very least incongruous” with Russia’s stated support for the international operation in Afghanistan, which includes agreements to allow transit of supplies across Russian territory.

On Friday Scheffer met Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov at the Munich conference in the highest-level contact between NATO and Russia since ties were frozen after the war in Georgia.—AFP