Russia Studying NATO Proposal to Convene NATO-Russia Council Meeting

Moscow is looking into NATO’s proposal to hold a NATO-Russia Council (NRC) meeting and may give an answer by the end of this year, Andrei Kelin, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department of European Cooperation said.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The NRC was established at the NATO-Russia Summit in Rome in 2002 as a forum for consultation, consensus-building, cooperation, joint decision and joint action.

Kelin confirmed to RIA Novosti that Russian authorities had been notified about the US-led military bloc’s "willingness after a long period of debates inside the Alliance to convene a NATO-Russia Council [meeting]."

He added that the proposed meeting might take place "not now but at some point in the future because preparations are needed."

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said earlier this week that it was time to look into the possibility of holding an NRC meeting. The Alliance plans to discuss this with the Russian delegation to the bloc.