Russia said on Friday it was prepared to restore military cooperation with NATO almost two years after relations were frozen during the Georgian war, Russian news agencies reported, according to Reuters. "We are ready again to seek together responses to modern challenges and threats to international security, as well as mutually acceptable solutions to the problems that have piled up," Interfax news agency quoted General Nikolai Makarov, chief of the Russian armed forces' general staff, as saying. He was speaking after meeting Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, NATO's military committee chairman, in Moscow. Ties between NATO and Russia were frozen after Russia sent troops to crush an August 2008 assault by Georgia -- a former Soviet republic that has been promised eventual NATO membership -- on the Russian-backed breakaway region of South Ossetia. Russia remains harshly critical of NATO's westward expansion which Moscow sees as a direct threat to the nation's security. But these concerns have been allayed lately as Georgia's unresolved conflicts with its pro-Moscow separatists undermined its NATO membership bid. Ukraine's new Russia-friendly leadership has itself buried membership plans. Di Paola said that in the next few months the Western alliance would focus on preparing a programme of joint actions with Russia for 2011. He said major areas of cooperation would include search and rescue operations at sea, fighting terrorism, and Afghanistan. Makarov said Russia would continue to provide transit routes for cargo and personnel to support the U.S.-led contingent fighting the purist Taliban movement in Afghanistan.
