Russia wants to fight illegal immigration with EU, US: envoy
29 July 2008, 15:03 CET

(BRUSSELS) - Russia wants to join with the European Union and the United States to combat illegal immigration and organised crime and is not looking to undermine NATO, Moscow's envoy to the alliance said Tuesday.

Russia, through a new security pact proposed by President Dmitry Medvedev, wants to abandon the Cold War logic of opposing blocs and create a new Euro-Atlantic dialogue involving Brussels, Washington and Moscow, he said.

"What Russia foresees is the reinforcement of Europe's security architecture through a troika of the three principle actors: the European Union, United States and Russia," Ambassador Dmitry Rogozin told AFP.

"The aim is to defend the external perimeter of our common space by treating together, in a concerted way, the problems of illegal immigration, organised crime and trafficking of various kinds," he said in an interview.

"We want to create a new Euro-Atlantic area, an area of common civilisations which would include Russia," he said.

In Berlin last month, Medvedev called for a summit to start to draw up a new security pact, saying that NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had failed to resolve Europe's security problems.

Moscow has been angered recently by the prospect of NATO moving into regions it regards as its traditional sphere of influence.

In particular, it opposes extending NATO membership to Georgia or Ukraine as a threat to Russian security.

On Monday, NATO ambassadors grilled Rogozin about Medvedev's proposal. They wanted to know what it would mean in concrete terms and whether it would complement or replace the world's biggest military alliance and the OSCE.

NATO is primarily concerned with defending its 26 member countries from outside attack, while the OSCE already plays a role in fighting organised crime and trafficking in people, drugs and weapons.

The proposal comes just as the EU is redefining its immigration policy.

It wants to better select the migrants it needs and crack down on illegal immigration, while at the same time helping to develop the poorer countries would-be EU immigrants are leaving.

"If we were stupid, we would have come with ideas that would provoke a confrontation," Rogozin told AFP. "This is not aimed against any institution."

But Moscow was "against the logic of blocs," he insisted.

"We are not satisfied with these two organisations, which have become bound by a sense of inertia."

He continued: "There are two options: either we slide toward confrontation, or we will have to come up with a new idea of European security."

While the ambassadors can expect more details about the pact on September 24, Russian analysts have warned Moscow that it would have difficulty convening any summit if its stated goal was to replace NATO.
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