BERLIN, July 7 /TASS/. German Foreign Minister Walter Frank Steinmeier said on Thursday that he did not want new confrontation between the West and Russia and a return to the Cold War days.

"Greater security for everybody in Europe should become our common goal. We cannot afford ourselves to return to a new old confrontation," Steinmeier said in an interview with the newspapers affiliated in the Funke media group the extracts from which the DPA news agency published on Thursday.

"Excessively cautious measures, which NATO is taking on the eastern flank, and readiness for dialogue are the two sides of one coin. One is impossible and senseless without the other," the German foreign minister stressed.