Asia

Asia

China, NATO have potential to develop partnership: Ischinger

02 February 2011 04:03 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. China and NATO have a potential to develop a certain partnership in the future, especially in addressing security challenges, said Wolfgang Ischinger, Chairman of Munich Security Conference (MSC), APA reports quoting Xinhua News Agency.

Ischinger, in an interview with Xinhua ahead of the annual conference which will be held in Munich from Friday to Sunday, said that he believed that NATO and China could be good partners in addressing security challenges, not only in Asia, but also in the world.

He called on the two sides to "sit together to discuss the rules of the game," in order to make sure that what the NATO do is never considered to be against the interests of China."

Taking the non-proliferation issue as an example, Ischinger further illustrated his idea that NATO and China share the same interests in many areas.

"Chinese interests, stability, regional progress, are totally compatible with kinds of non-proliferation interests, which we in Europe have been regarding in our own region and globally," he said.

Talking about the upcoming annual Munich Security conference, Ischinger said as the global political balance had started to shift in a rather dramatic way into the Pacific area, the question of security cooperation in the area should be discussed at a globally focused conference like the conference in Munich.

"I was very happy last year to be able to welcome the foreign minister of China, Yang Jiechi, who was one of our keynote speakers. China today is one of the key political elements in the world," he said.

He also said he expected that in the future more senior Chinese political leaders would participate actively in the Munich conference.

Referring to the upcoming Munich conference, Ischinger, a senior German diplomat who had acted as the German ambassador to the United States and the United Kingdom, said some new security challenges, like cyber war, were going to be mixed with the traditional issues, such as NATO’s role in Afghanistan and the ballistic missile defense between the United States and Russia in Europe.

Meanwhile, Ischinger also hoped that after the NATO-Russia event in Lisbon at the end of last year, the Munich conference would serve as a catalyst to prepare the follow-up decisions.

"In the area of missile defense, for example, where I certainly believe that the United States and Western Europe and Russia should try to figure out a way to develop a joint project, not against anyone, but in order to make sure that we will define each other really not anymore as an adversary, but as a partner with who we can do business across the border," he said.

The MSC, an annual conference on international security policy, was founded in 1962 by German publisher Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin.

Around 300 high-level participants will attend the three-day meeting this year, among whom are U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy Catherine Ashton.