Russia drafts "post-Cold War" East-West security pact

By Conor Humphries

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia on Sunday published its proposal for a new Euro-Atlantic security treaty that would restrict its ability to use military force unilaterally if the United States and its European allies agreed to do the same.

President Dmitry Medvedev has said the European Security Treaty is needed to replace Cold War-era institutions like NATO that are ill-suited to defusing tensions in a multipolar world, but his proposals have received a muted reception in the West.

Medvedev has invited proposals from Western countries on how to build a new security treaty. The draft, which would "finally do away with the legacy of the Cold War," has been sent to all relevant leaders, the Kremlin said in a statement.

The treaty is essentially "a legal obligation under which no state or international organisation in the Euro-Atlantic area can increase its security at the expense of the security of another state or organisation," the statement said.

It would be open to "all states of the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian space from Vancouver to Vladivostok," as well as members of NATO, the European Union and groupings of former Soviet countries.

The document, published on the Kremlin web site (here), reaffirms the role of the United Nations Security Council, in which Russia has a veto, as the ultimate arbiter of international conflict.

It would place restrictions on the use of force by signatories and create a new mechanism for conflict resolution. Any security measure taken by a signatory country would have to pay "due regard to the security interests of all other parties."

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