U.S., Russian officials wary on NATO-Russia ties

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The United States and Russia on Friday raised doubts about prospects of a fast return to normal ties between NATO and Russia after the Georgian war, despite a European move to restart partnership talks with Moscow next month.

The 26-nation military alliance scaled back its cooperation with Russia after the August conflict over Georgia's rebel South Ossetia, declaring that "business as usual" was impossible after a Russian incursion condemned by the West.

Despite differences over the extent to which Russia has complied with a ceasefire accord in Georgia, European nations -- most of them NATO members -- have agreed to relaunch talks on an EU-Russia political and economic pact on December 2.

"We understand there is a lot of interest in NATO in resuming dialogue and contacts with Russia and that is important and we support that," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Dan Fried told a briefing in Brussels.

"It is difficult for us to go back to business as usual since the Russian military did actually attack another country," he said. "It's hard when you also have Russian troops in another country against its will."

Fried acknowledged "modest progress" at talks between Russian and Georgian officials in Geneva this week, but said Moscow had not fully complied with the ceasefire. He also raised concerns that European and other observers were not getting proper access to South Ossetia.

NATO foreign ministers meet in Brussels in two weeks to review the decision to suspend high-level meetings of the NATO-Russia Council (NRC), the main forum for their ties.

'BLOCKED COMPLETELY'

In Washington, the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak, also sounded skeptical about resuming normal NATO-Russia ties, saying it was deplorable that NATO had scaled back cooperation just when a forum was needed to discuss the Georgian war.

"We certainly would like to see the NATO-Russia Council working but not the way it has so far. It failed completely during this test," said Kislyak, a former Russian ambassador to NATO. "The only mechanism that we had been creating for maintaining peace and security was blocked completely."

Kislyak, who took up his post in Washington in September, said Russia remains interested in working with NATO on projects that will increase mutual security.

But "we are not going to come and to beg for cooperation. It is not us who suspended it," he said at The Nixon Center think tank.

U.S. NATO Ambassador Kurt Volker, an architect of the NRC, was wary of prospects of relaunching the forum, which in the past has yielded modest cooperation pacts in areas from counter-terrorism to the Afghanistan conflict.

"The NATO-Russia Council was based on the idea that we had shared principles and values ... . So that's why we don't want to just go back to where we were," he told the briefing in Brussels.

Fried and Volker said the United States did not rule out all contacts with Russia, which NATO officials say have been taking place at a low level since the Georgia war.

Separately, an EU diplomat said Heidi Tagliavini, a Swiss former U.N. special representative to Georgia, had agreed to head an EU-funded independent investigation into the causes of the August war, and report her findings next July.

Russian troops crushed Georgian forces after they tried to retake the pro-Moscow region of South Ossetia.

Tbilisi's drive to join NATO has long exacerbated tensions with Moscow. Washington has supported a push to put Georgia and Ukraine on a formal path toward possible membership. But European nations such as Germany have resisted this.

NATO foreign ministers are due to review the issue in December.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell in Washington, David Brunnstrom in Brussels and Christian Lowe in Moscow; Editing by Xavier Briand)