Anatoly Serdyukov told the NATO-Russia Joint Permanent Council that there was "a whiff of the Alliance's lecturing Russia and its other partners in the context of its security policies."
"This approach, as well as an inadequate consideration of Russia's interests, could narrow the window of our cooperation," he said, highlighting "the primacy of international law, military restraint, due consideration of one another's security interests, and equal dialogue" as the basis of successful cooperation.
He said existing Russia-NATO cooperation worked well, including the modeling of a joint missile defense system and Russia's involvement in NATO-led Operation Active Endeavor in the Mediterranean, and proposed some new forms of joint work.
"We have done a lot on theater missile defense," Serdyukov said, though "[further progress] has been impeded by U.S. plans to deploy its third missile defense site in Europe and possibly integrate it with European anti-missile programs."
He said the Alliance and Russia had agreed to hold a joint crisis management exercise on NATO territory in 2010 and offered NATO Russia's assistance in involving the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a regional grouping led by Moscow, in the NATO effort to counter drug trafficking from Afghanistan.
"We could start discussing the transit [of military cargo] to Afghanistan within the CSTO-NATO framework," he said.
"Adding [CSTO] capabilities to those of NATO would generate action on both sides of the Afghan border and, from our perspective, would lead to a much more effective joint endeavor [there]," Russia's defense minister said.
