U.S. Poses No Objection To NATO-Russia Talks

December 2, 2008 8:26 p.m. EST

Brussels, Belgium (AHN) - NATO officials announced Tuesday the alliance will gradually restart talks with Russia on the ambassadorial level and a reluctant U.S. did not object to the plan.

"The allies agreed on a conditional and graduated re-engagement with Russia," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters after the meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, according to Agence France-Presse. However, he stressed that reviving the NATO-Russia Council dialogue does not constitute an approval of Moscow's action against Georgia in August.

U.S. State Secretary Condoleezza Rice, who met NATO counterparts for the last time as part of the outgoing Bush administration, told the New York Times, "This isn't an issue of isolating Russia but it is an issue of what kinds of contacts are appropriate. I think this is a completely appropriate thing for the alliance to do."

The U.S. approval did not come without Germany agreeing to support Washington's request to "accelerate work on preparing Ukraine and Georgia for eventual membership" with NATO.

The dialogue between NATO and Russia has been frozen since three months ago because Moscow refuses to put troops to former positions in Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia after the August conflict.