OREANDA-NEWS. September 8, 2011.  Moscow hosted the tenth regular session of the Russian-French Council for Security Cooperation, with a joint attendance by the foreign and defense ministers of the two countries. Over the past years this largely unique institution for coordinating Russia and France’s approaches to international problems, established in 2002 by a decision of the Russian and French presidents, has proved its relevance. The work of the Council fully reflects the high quality of ties between the two countries and allows the parties in an atmosphere of trust, openness and partnership to conduct on a regular basis a frank exchange of views on the most topical issues of international politics and security.

By tradition Russian President Dmitry Medvedev received the session participants.

The focus of the discussion, held in a constructive and trusting vein, was the issues of ensuring strategic stability in the European and Euro-Atlantic space, military-political aspects of Russia’s relations with the EU and NATO, and missile defense problems. The Russian side reaffirmed its desire to comprehensively facilitate the creation of a new security architecture based on the principle of its indivisibility, collective, democratic foundations and corresponding to the present-day realities.

It was agreed to jointly elaborate the questions of Russian-French cooperation in generating a “security community” in the Euro-Atlantic space.

In the context of the French chairmanship of the G20, the parties discussed preparations for the upcoming G20 summit in Cannes, November 3-4, 2011.

The parties substantively examined the situations in Libya, Syria and the North Africa and Middle East region as a whole, and the state of affairs in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. They compared approaches to the interaction of the two countries on the Iranian nuclear file and on the Korean Peninsula nuclear problem. They also exchanged views on the prospects of normalizing the situation in Afghanistan.

A number of other regional problems were touched on.

There were also bilateral meetings between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his French counterpart Alain Juppe and between Russian Minister of Defense Anatoliy Serdyukov and head of the French defense agency Gerard Longuet, in which they discussed various aspects of Russian-French cooperation in the political, economic, cultural and military fields.

The Council’s next meeting will be held on a rotating basis in France.