Photo:
RIA Novosti
Russia’s foreign Minister during the presidency of bill Clinton in the United States did not conduct any talks for accession to NATO, told RIA Novosti, the ex-Minister of foreign Affairs Igor Ivanov.
Earlier on Saturday, Politico published a fragment of an interview that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave Director Oliver stone for Showtime. In it, Putin says that at a recent meeting with Clinton in the debate said, “Maybe look at this option is that Russia will join NATO”. According to Putin, “Clinton said, I don’t mind”.
“Officially we have not proposed anything. I personally in this kind of discussions did not participate,” — said Ivanov, who served as foreign Minister from 1998 to 2004.
“At the time, Boris Nikolayevich (Yeltsin) also did not rule out the possibility of joining NATO. Then, in my opinion, Sergei Yastrzhembsky said that his words were misunderstood. But the foreign Ministry level, such issues were not discussed”, — added ex-the Minister.
However, he noted that, in principle, talk of joining NATO was able to wear a hypothetical. “At the time was such an informal, relaxed hypothetical reasoning aloud that if the NATO will be reborn and will not be an aggressive military bloc to the East, and will adopt a different character, why would Russia also did not join. But given that the nature of NATO has not changed, and the attitude of Russia to the Alliance has not changed”, — Ivanov said.