Russia says ready to resume NATO military ties

Russian fighter jets fly in formation over Red Square and the Kremlin in Moscow, May 6, 2010.

From Reuters:  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.

"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.  (photo: Denis Sinyakov/Reuters)

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