German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday that she was hoping for an "historic" agreement to start talks on the possibility of linking NATO's new missile-defence system to Russia's one as she joined the second day of a summit in Lisbon, DPA reported.
On Friday, US President Barack Obama said that NATO leaders had agreed to set up an alliance-wide missile shield. Diplomats said the alliance hoped to invite Russia to start talks on cooperating with it at a meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday.
"I think the cooperation with Russia will be a milestone. A former military opponent is clearly becoming a partner: it's a change in cooperation which you could call historic," Merkel said.
NATO's Friday decision paved the way for the US to bring parts of a long-range anti-missile system to Europe, and for NATO to create a computer programme which would allow NATO commanders to use the US and short-range European systems as a single unit.
Diplomats at the summit said that NATO leaders would formally invite Russia to "explore the possibilities" of cooperating with the system, predominantly by coupling its own early-warning facilities into the overall programme.
That was envisaged as a confidence-building measure, after a former US plan to site anti-missile systems in Europe without involving NATO or Russia in 2007 triggered a stand-off with Moscow.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was due to join the summit on Saturday afternoon and was widely tipped to accept the invitation to start talks.
There was still a long way to go before Nato and Russia share security responsibilities, but "the fact that we are taking this path at all is of utmost importance," Merkel stressed.
The NATO-Russia summit was also expected to call for more cooperation on training Afghan anti-drugs police and joint efforts to combat terrorism and attacks on passenger aircraft, and sign a deal expanding NATO's rights to transport non-lethal cargoes into and out of Afghanistan via the Russian rail network.