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Russia ready to foster dialogue with NATO but it should be professional, says top diplomat

Sergey Lavrov also recalled that NATO was attempting to convince Moscow to return to revising the Vienna document on the transparency of military activities "to make it more intrusive"

MOSCOW, September 15. /TASS/. Russia is ready to foster a dialogue with NATO, but the dialogue should not be emotional, but professional, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters following the joint meeting of foreign ministers, defense ministers and secretaries of national security councils of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Dushanbe on Wednesday.

"We are ready to speak, but speak professionally, not emotionally," he said.

NATO is currently attempting to convince Moscow to return to revising the Vienna document on the transparency of military activities "to make it more intrusive," Lavrov said. "We say: the Vienna document was concluded, and by the way, we execute it as in force in 2011, at the moment of a certain balance of forces between the Russian Federation and NATO on the European continent. And the procedures that the document stipulates, were in line with that balance of forces. The West is currently attempting to tighten inspections. We are not ready for that, simply because the West has sharply changed that balance," he explained.

If NATO wants to improve the Vienna document, Russia proposes a return "to the positions both sides held in late 1990s, and it will be possible to ensure confidence in each other even more transparently," Russia’s top diplomat noted.