Russia's Lavrov says no alternative to Russian-EU-US cooperation

 There is no alternative to cooperation between Russia, the European Union and the U.S. in the Euroatlantic space, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday in a lecture for the staff and students of the Moscow-based MGIMO Diplomatic University.

"There's no alternative to cooperation between Russia, the European Union and the U.S. in that area," Lavrov said. "President Dmitry Medvedev called it a supporting pillar of the Euroatlatic region."

"The problem is we simply didn't have a common understanding of what the end of the Cold War actually meant but we can be more prudent now than we we some twenty to fifteen years ago," he said. "Time has come for an all-round review of the situation in the Euroatlantic region."

"Russia's proposal for a new agreement on European security furshishes us with an opportunity to do this," Lavrov said. "There are clear signs of the understanding that collective rather than unilateral responses to all the threats and challenges should be thought."

"Now that a pivot towards a revitalization of Euroatlantic and global affairs has emerged, the people who thrived on the confrontationist policies in recent years or who would make Europe's future a hostage of its past have grown visibly nervous," he said.

"Everyone's tired of tensions, everyone wants to cooperate," Lavrov said. "The attempts to bolster the confronational mentality have been registered in the British parliament' s committee on defense that issued a report on a new confrtontation with Russia recently."

However, the authors of the report had to admit the importance of building relations with Russia on the basis of realistic thinking rather than abstract and frequently misleading ideas about common values, he said.

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