NATO and Russia launched an ambitious attempt yesterday to forge a new global security charter as allies and partners, with the Kremlin lobbying for a power of veto within the Western alliance by establishing joint decision-taking procedures.
Reflecting the radical strategic shifts taking place as a result of the September 11th atrocities and the growing friendship between Presidents Bush and Putin, Lord George Robertson, the NATO secretary general, arrived in Moscow yesterday to talk of the "historic opportunity" offered by the unparalleled Russian-Western cooperation in the war against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.
Mr Putin said the Kremlin and NATO were building a "long-term partnership" and that Mr Bush had agreed to raise new Russian proposals on relations with NATO with his 18 NATO allies.
The Russian proposals, said the Russian Defence Minister, Mr Sergei Ivanov, would create "a completely new mechanism to act together as equals - NATO members and Russia. This would enable Russia to have, if you like, voting rights, the right to take decisions".
Lord Robertson, who is to meet Mr Putin today on his first trip to Moscow since the start of the war in Afghanistan, confirmed the proposals would hand veto powers to the Kremlin. He described NATO and Russia as "trusting friends and brothers-in-arms", and said the new negotiations could result in a "a huge change, a sea change in the way we do business".
The Kremlin push for a new Russia-NATO council would, Lord Robertson said, "give Russia a right of equality, but also a responsibility, and also an obligation that would come from being part of a consensus-building organisation".
By agreeing to the presence of US troops in Russia's central Asian backyard, by furnishing the Pentagon with high-grade intelligence on the Taliban, and by making concessions to the US on national missile defence, Mr Putin has demonstrated he wants a much closer relationship with the West. Yesterday his policy appeared to be paying off. It emerged that both sides were negotiating a complex set of interrelated issues which would result in a radically transformed relationship going well beyond the accord on cooperation sealed in 1997. That agreement sought to make "partners in peace" of Russia and NATO, but the new agreement being negotiated could lock the former cold war foes in a warm embrace.
Mr Ivanov bluntly declared that the 1997 accord was not working and that it should be ditched. Lord Robertson signalled that the depth of the intended new arrangement was such that it would require affirmation by each of NATO'S 19 governments.
Ahead of his meeting with the NATO chief today, Mr Putin described his first summit in the US last week with Mr Bush as a turning point in relations between the nations and dismissed talk of both leaders seeking to capitalise on the diplomatic fallout from the Afghan campaign. "Those who see a tactical rapprochement in our relations caused by recent events are deeply deluded," Mr Putin stated. "What is on the agenda is a programme for long-term partnership. That's our mutual position. "Russia does not intend to stand in a queue for admission to NATO, but it is ready to narrow its positions with NATO." Both Russian and NATO officials signalled that a long list of proposals were now on the table and would need to be discussed in depth.
With American blessing, Mr Tony Blair last week told Mr Putin that there should be a Russia-NATO body created, a statement seen as rewarding Mr Putin's support for the anti-terrorist campaign.
Mr Ivanov said that the 1997 accord establishing a Brussels-based permanent joint council had failed and that everyone knew that. Russia and NATO faced a common enemy - international terrorism - for the first time in decades, he said. "The new threats are from neither Russian nor NATO territory," he added.
That fact meant, added Lord Robertson, that there was "a historic opportunity to take cooperation to a new level".