NATO says near deal on Russian Afghan help

NATO said yesterday it was nearing a deal to use Russian land and airspace to supply its security forces in Afghanistan, but Western diplomats denied any trade-off with Moscow to keep Ukraine and Georgia out of NATO.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said he was hopeful of increased cooperation with Russia. An alliance spokesman said NATO was negotiating accords on land and air corridors for its troops and equipment, which could be announced when President Vladimir Putin attends a NATO summit next month.

"I hope that Afghanistan might be an area where NATO and Russia can make strides to co-operate more closely together," de Hoop Scheffer told a security conference in Brussels.

Diplomats said a NATO-Russia council meeting tomorrow would discuss a "package of deliverables" also including the possible leasing of Russian planes and trains, Russian training for Afghan helicopter pilots and counter-narcotics assistance.

"Discussions are under way. There is no deal done. We are working towards an agreement at the Bucharest summit," NATO spokesman James Appathurai said of an upcoming April 2-4 meeting in the Romanian capital.

"We are negotiating land and air transit agreements plus the possibility of making more permanent our co-operation on counter-narcotics training," he added.

The US secretaries of state and defence, Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates, will visit Moscow on Tuesday to discuss with their Russian counterparts a wider package of issues including missile defence, conventional and nuclear arms control as well as co-operation on Afghanistan and Iran, the diplomats said.

NATO's 43,000-strong operation in Afghanistan is facing a severe challenge from resurgent Islamist Taliban fighters. The former Soviet Union intervened in the mountainous central Asian country in 1979 but was forced out after heavy losses in the 1980s inflicted by Islamist guerillas partly armed by the West. NATO and Russia already co-operate in training Afghan and central Asian counter-narcotics officials as part of efforts to contain Afghanistan's huge opium trade.