Each participant in the 46th annual International Munich Security Conference has its own version of what took place over the weekend there.
This is true of the NATO countries, the hosts of the conference, and the foreign ministers of China, Iran, Russia and other countries represented.
The British Financial Times, in an effort to sound like an international newspaper, summed up the results of the Munich conference by saying that NATO is seeking partners in its Central Asian policy, that is, in Afghanistan. This statement does not sound very similar to the assessment by Moscow, Washington or Tehran, for that matter.
In effect, this is the main outcome of Munich-2010. Previously, the Western countries mostly discussed security within their own circle, making rare attempts to listen mistrustfully to others (for instance, Vladimir Putin in 2007). Now they are making attempts to erode the borders between the West and the non-West, albeit without much success.
For Russia, the proposed treaty on European security was pivotal at the conference. President Dmitry Medvedev presented this initiative as a broad outline in June 2008, less than two months before Georgia's attack on South Ossetia. If it had received an instant reply, there would have been no shocking pause for a month and a half during which the governments and the public in Europe and the United States failed to admit that it was Georgia that attacked Russia, not the other way round.
Other participants in the conference, including China and Iran, had their own Ossetias, which have seriously undermined their trust in the West. Trust must be restored if they are to become NATO's partners (in many cases such partnership is essential).
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke about these issues in Munich on Saturday. Varying from 8 to 17 lines in different formats, media reports on his speech are repeating one and the same statements. The actual speech itself consists of 190 lines or almost 11,000 characters and contains many sound ideas.
Mr Lavrov suggested that the Euro-Atlantic space, of which Russia is part, should not be torn into spheres of influence because economic, technological and cultural contacts bring nations closer together instead of alienating them and not only in Europe. He implied that the old structure of military security has started seriously impeding Europe's development and the processes of globalization, thereby causing it to lag behind other parts of the world. Mr Lavrov described this trend as "unsound." Usually such statements are made from the rostrum if the bigger part of the audience accepts them, at least in their minds.
The Russian foreign minister focused on the proposals to revive the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) as the only agency currently uniting the Euro-Atlantic space. As for the initiative on a European security treaty, now Moscow is talking about only one principle - indivisibility of security in the Euro-Atlantic space and wants to make this principle legally binding.
Translating numerous declarations of the 1990s into the language of international treaties is a formidable task. As distinct from a non-aggression pact, the violation of which leads to sanctions, the suggested treaty prohibits even preparations for an attack and provides for penalty.
The gist of the problem is that this principle is binding for the NATO members alone but not for other countries. In other words, there exist two contradictory approaches in the Euro-Atlantic space, which is understandable. In the 1990s some had illusions that whatever was left of the USSR and the Eastern bloc would simply join NATO and everything would be fine. However, they proved to be wrong and the "unsound" trend as described by Mr Lavrov emerged.
As distinct from 2008 and 2009, the Moscow-proposed European security treaty was actively discussed in Munich. For the most part, the speakers tried to tell Russia why its initiative is bad. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on the eve of the conference that the adoption of the Moscow-coveted legally binding treaty would take years, and this is true. It only remains to resolve this problem fast.
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Dmitry Kosyrev)
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
