"Regardless of the outcome of the upcoming Russian presidential elections, our policy regarding the North Atlantic alliance... will remain unchanged," Sergei Ryabkov told a RIA Novosti round table on Russia-NATO relations.
"Of course, adjustments are possible," Ryabkov said. "But I don't see any factors for a fundamental change in policy."
Ryabkov said Russia and NATO were likely to participate in joint peacekeeping operations.
"We are not currently holding any joint operations with NATO except the counterterrorist operation of the alliance's naval forces and Russia's Navy in the eastern Mediterranean," he said. "However, in the future, joint peacekeeping examples cannot be ruled out, and we should be prepared for this."
Russian and NATO naval ships currently jointly patrol the Mediterranean. Besides this, Russia and NATO exchange intelligence data, information on each other's air movements, cooperate in the missile defense sphere and in fighting drug traffic from Afghanistan.
Ryabkov also said that the resolution of global security problems was impossible without NATO. He said Russia and NATO were working on an adapted Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty as well as cooperating in the sphere of missile defense.
NATO's refusal to ratify an updated version of the Soviet-era CFE, aimed at regulating the deployment of non-nuclear weapons on the continent, has been a major problem in recent Russia-NATO relations.
Russia imposed in December last year a unilateral moratorium on the arms reductions treaty, which the West regards as a cornerstone of Euro-Atlantic security, and said it would resume its participation in the treaty only after NATO countries ratify the document.
Russia has urged NATO countries to ratify the adapted version of the treaty, signed on November 19, 1999 and so far ratified only by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Moscow considers the original CFE treaty, signed in December 1990 by 16 NATO countries and six Warsaw Pact members, to be discriminatory and outdated since it does not reflect the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc, the breakup of the Soviet Union, or recent NATO expansion.
Ryabkov said the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system was aimed first of all at Russia's strategic potential.
"According to our specialists, it won't address any other task than work on Russia's strategic potential," he said.
The United States is planning to deploy 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic as part of its European missile shield, to avert possible strikes from "rogue" states, such as Iran and North Korea.
Moscow fiercely opposes the U.S. plans, saying the European shield would destroy the strategic balance and threaten Russia's national interests.
Ryabkov said the U.S. plans complicate Russia-NATO relations because Washington had made the decision to go ahead with the shield "with no account for our interests, despite our interests and to the detriment of our interests."
