Russia rules out joining 'US-dominated' NATO

Russia ruled out joining the US-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's military bloc on Tuesday saying such a move would jeopardise its sovereignty as it asserted that it was capable of ensuring its security.

"To join the organisation, dominated by the US, would jeopardise the sovereignty of Russia," Moscow's NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin said.

Commenting on US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's major NATO policy speech, Rogozin told Rossiya 24 TV channel: "There was no such need as Russia was capable of ensuring its security."

With Russia marking the 92nd anniversary of foundation of the Red Army as the 'Day of the Defender of Fatherland' today, Rogozin said that NATO needs reforms as in its present form it has become the "instrument of projecting US interests" on the global scale.

Earlier speaking on NATO policy, Clinton had underscored that the US-led military bloc poses no threat to Russia, which in its new military doctrine has identified its eastward expansion and possible inclusion of former Soviet states of Ukraine and Georgia as a major threat to the security of the ex-Communist nation.

"While Russia faces challenges to its security, NATO is not among them. We want a cooperative NATO-Russia relationship that produces concrete results and draws NATO and Russia closer together," Clinton said in her foreign policy speech on NATO on Monday.

Moscow -- which has resumed its cooperation with the bloc with the framework of NATO-Russia Council stalled due to five-day Caucasus war in August 2008 with NATO aspirant Georgia -- has agreed to provide air and land corridors for supplies to the US-led troops in Afghanistan.

However, it has refused to send its troops to the war-torn country as some NATO members had suggested.

Clinton's NATO speech was preceded by the Moscow visit of the "Eminent Persons Group" of the bloc led by former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright.

Commenting on President Dmitry Medvedev's proposals for "indivisible security" in post-Cold War Europe, Clinton had noted that some of Russia's proposals contain "constructive ideas" and welcomed the opportunity to engage seriously with Moscow on this important subject.