Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has proposed a pan-European summit to review a plan to create a "reliable collective" security system in Europe, AFP reported.
Lavrov said Saturday the existing architecture of European security "did not pass the strength test in recent events," in a reference to the Georgia conflict, and told the UN General Assembly that a "pan-European summit" should take "a comprehensive look at security problems."
Lavrov did not say when or where this summit would be held but said its task would be to weigh a proposal made by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Berlin last June to develop "a treaty on European Security, a kind of 'Helsinki-2'."
The Helsinki accords were signed by 35 states in the Finnish capital in 1975 in a bid to improve relations between the Moscow-led communist bloc and the West.
In a major foreign policy speech in Berlin last June, Medvedev said the eastwards expansion of NATO risked "spoiling" relations between Moscow and the West "in a radical way" for years to come.
He proposed the creation of a sweeping new European security pact to replace Cold War-era treaties.
Saturday, Lavrov said the proposed treaty aimed to "create a reliable collective system that would ensure equal security for all states."
"It is a process involving all participants who would reaffirm their commitment to fundamental principles of international law, such as the non-use of force and peaceful settlement of disputes, sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-interference in the internal affairs, and inadmissibility of strengthening one's own security by infringing upon the security of others," he added.
This was a veiled attack on Washington's plan to site 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a targeting radar in the Czech Republic as part of a missile defense system already deployed in the United States, Britain and Greenland.
The project angers Moscow, which says the plan is a threat to its security and has threatened to respond with targeted attacks on the missile shield's future sites.