MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) – NATO should develop closer ties with China, India, Pakistan and Russia and become the forum for consultation on global security, the alliance’s head said on Sunday, but a senior Russian politician reacted with skepticism.

The four countries all had interests in stability in Afghanistan and could do more to help develop and assist the country, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.

“What would be the harm if countries such as China, India, Pakistan and others were to develop closer ties with NATO? I think, in fact, there would only be a benefit, in terms of trust, confidence and cooperation,” he said.

NATO should become the global forum with other nations on a host of security issues extending from terrorism, cyber attacks, nuclear proliferation, piracy, climate change and competition for natural resources as well as Afghanistan, he said.

MUNICH, Germany, Feb 7 (Reuters) – NATO should develop closer ties with China, India, Pakistan and Russia and become the forum for consultation on global security, the alliance’s head said on Sunday, but a senior Russian politician reacted with scepticism. The four countries all had interests in stability in Afghanistan and could do more to help develop and assist the country, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. "What would be the harm if countries such as China, India, Pakistan and others were to develop closer ties with NATO? I think, in fact, there would only be a benefit, in terms of trust, confidence and cooperation," he said. NATO should become the global forum with other nations on a host of security issues extending from terrorism, cyber attacks, nuclear proliferation, piracy, climate change and competition for natural resources as well as Afghanistan, he said. "NATO can be the place where views, concerns and best practices on security are shared by NATO’s global partners. And where … we might work out how to tackle global challenges together," he told a conference in Munich ahead of discussion of a new NATO Strategic Concept due to be approved in November. Rasmussen said NATO was already working with Pakistan, and other countries stood to gain from a stable Afghanistan. "India has a stake in Afghan stability. China too. And both could help further develop and rebuild Afghanistan. The same goes for Russia," he said. RUSSIAN SCEPTCISM A senior Russian politician reacted sceptically to the proposals, saying NATO first had to think globally, and complained that Russia had not been involved in the process. "I believe the problem of NATO today is that NATO develops in reverse order — it tries to act globally more and more but continues to think locally," said Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Russian Duma’s International Affairs Committee. "As soon as NATO starts to reach beyond its borders this is no longer just an internal matter for NATO," said Kosachev, who was also speaking the annual Munich Security Conference. Moscow still views NATO, its Cold War adversary, with deep suspicion. Ties were severely strained by the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia and by U.S.-backed plans to invite more former Soviet states to join the alliance. Kosachev accused the alliance of provoking the Georgia-Russia conflict by promising Tbilisi eventual membership and of failing to tackle the drugs problem in Afghanistan. He urged NATO to show it was serious by having proper discussions with Russia about Moscow’s security concerns and proposals. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, chair of a group of experts drawing up the Strategic Concept, and Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay backed Rasmussen’s vision of NATO as the preeminent forum for global security discussion."I think we are talking about how we can have some coordinating mechanism for all the various organisations that exist in the world," Albright said, adding that the question was "which organisation can make the biggest difference." "While I am a great admirer of the United Nations, I know what it can and cannot do," she said, noting that it was NATO cooperation that halted the killing in Kosovo in the 1990s. Rasmussen said he did not see the Western military alliance, which groups 26 European nations, Canada and the United States, becoming a competitor to the United Nations. "We are talking here about a group of nations consulting, formally or informally, on security. Nothing more. "In fact, I think it would actually benefit the UN. NATO is operating almost without exception in support of UN resolutions. Allies are all strong and active UN members," he said. (Editing by Dave Graham and Dominic Evans)

ANKARA/MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) – The United States and Germany said on Saturday they saw no sign Tehran would make concessions on its nuclear programme, despite upbeat comments from Iran’s foreign minister over prospects for a deal.

Iran’s Manouchehr Mottaki said he had “a very good meeting” with the head of the U.N. nuclear agency on a plan to swap Iran’s low-enriched uranium for higher-grade nuclear fuel to be used in a Tehran reactor producing medical isotopes.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Yukiya Amano said he wanted dialogue with Iran to speed up.

“Dialogue is continuing, this should be accelerated. That’s the point,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an annual security conference in Munich. He added that during the meeting Mottaki had made no new proposal on the swap plan.

MUNICH (Reuters) – Iran sees good prospects for clinching a deal with world powers on exchanging some of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) for higher-grade fuel it can use in a reactor producing medical isotopes, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Friday.

Such a deal could represent a major breakthrough in the long-running dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, but it was not clear whether Iran’s conditions would be acceptable to the United States and others.

“I personally believe we have created conducive ground for such an exchange in the not very distant future,” Mottaki told the annual Munich Security Conference.

But he said it should be up to Tehran to set the amounts to be exchanged, based on its needs.

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) – Afghanistan will not pay bribes to persuade Taliban footsoldiers to stop fighting, but will help them to reintegrate into Afghan society and find jobs, Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasul said on Friday.

In an interview with Reuters, Rasul also rejected the suggestion that Taliban fighters might accept money under the scheme, which Western donors agreed to fund at a conference in London last week, and then simply resume their insurgency.

“We are not going to bribe them to stop fighting. If they come on board, drop their guns, reintegrate their village, they need to live. They need to have a life to feed their family,” Rasul said at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

“So we need to provide them the kind of social help — for example land, agriculture, whatever they need — so they can start to learn and have a proper life. The issue is not to pay them money or bribe them.”

MUNICH, Germany, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Afghanistan will not pay bribes to persuade Taliban footsoldiers to stop fighting, but will help them to reintegrate into Afghan society and find jobs, Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasul said on Friday. In an interview with Reuters, Rasul also rejected the suggestion that Taliban fighters might accept money under the scheme, which Western donors agreed to fund at a conference in London last week, and then simply resume their insurgency. "We are not going to bribe them to stop fighting. If they come on board, drop their guns, reintegrate their village, they need to live. They need to have a life to feed their family," Rasul said at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. "So we need to provide them the kind of social help — for example land, agriculture, whatever they need — so they can start to learn and have a proper life. The issue is not to pay them money or bribe them." Rasul said the Taliban insurgents fighting the Afghan government and NATO forces were not a homogeneous group. There were footsoldiers with no ideological motivation or links to groups like al Qaeda, and "those people can be brought on board", he said. "But there are elements within the Taliban — Pakistani Taliban and some Afghan Taliban — that have closer links with al Qaeda, and those people cannot be integrated or reconciled, so we need to fight them." TIES IMPROVING WITH PAKISTAN The United States aims, through deploying an extra 30,000 troops this year, to weaken the insurgency to the point where its leaders would accept some form of settlement with the Afghan government. President Barack Obama plans to start withdrawing U.S. troops in July 2011, although the pace of the drawdown will depend on conditions at the time. Rasul said ties were improving with Pakistan, which Afghanistan has long viewed with suspicion because of its ties to the Afghan Taliban, which it backed through the 1990s. Many security analysts believe Pakistan continues to see those links as a means of exercising leverage in Afghanistan and countering the influence there of its rival, India. Rasul said Afghanistan and Pakistan were in discussion about how Pakistan could help stop militants who had safe haven there from crossing the border to attack Afghan and NATO forces. "We are in the phase of trust-building, confidence-building between Afghanistan and Pakistan," he said. He said a secure, peaceful and democratic Afghanistan was no threat to Pakistan. "The promotion of extremism" was not in Islamabad’s interests, he said, because it too was suffering militant violence. "So we have started a deep strategic discussion and we will continue to do it…It is a beginning," Rasul said.

MUNICH, Germany, Feb 5 (Reuters) – Afghanistan will not pay bribes to persuade Taliban footsoldiers to stop fighting, but will help them to reintegrate into Afghan society and find jobs, Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasul said on Friday. In an interview with Reuters, Rasul also rejected the suggestion that Taliban fighters might accept money under the scheme, which Western donors agreed to fund at a conference in London last week, and then simply resume their insurgency. "We are not going to bribe them to stop fighting. If they come on board, drop their guns, reintegrate their village, they need to live. They need to have a life to feed their family," Rasul said at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. "So we need to provide them the kind of social help — for example land, agriculture, whatever they need — so they can start to learn and have a proper life. The issue is not to pay them money or bribe them." Rasul said the Taliban insurgents fighting the Afghan government and NATO forces were not a homogeneous group. There were footsoldiers with no ideological motivation or links to groups like al Qaeda, and "those people can be brought on board", he said. "But there are elements within the Taliban — Pakistani Taliban and some Afghan Taliban — that have closer links with al Qaeda, and those people cannot be integrated or reconciled, so we need to fight them." TIES IMPROVING WITH PAKISTAN The United States aims, through deploying an extra 30,000 troops this year, to weaken the insurgency to the point where its leaders would accept some form of settlement with the Afghan government. President Barack Obama plans to start withdrawing U.S. troops in July 2011, although the pace of the drawdown will depend on conditions at the time. Rasul said ties were improving with Pakistan, which Afghanistan has long viewed with suspicion because of its ties to the Afghan Taliban, which it backed through the 1990s. Many security analysts believe Pakistan continues to see those links as a means of exercising leverage in Afghanistan and countering the influence there of its rival, India. Rasul said Afghanistan and Pakistan were in discussion about how Pakistan could help stop militants who had safe haven there from crossing the border to attack Afghan and NATO forces. "We are in the phase of trust-building, confidence-building between Afghanistan and Pakistan," he said. He said a secure, peaceful and democratic Afghanistan was no threat to Pakistan. "The promotion of extremism" was not in Islamabad’s interests, he said, because it too was suffering militant violence. "So we have started a deep strategic discussion and we will continue to do it…It is a beginning," Rasul said.

LONDON (Reuters) – The United States will more than double its security assistance for Yemen and Britain will host an international meeting this month to seek ways of preventing the poorest Arab state from becoming an al Qaeda stronghold.

The moves highlighted mounting Western concern over Yemen after a failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb a U.S. airliner by a Nigerian man who said he had received training and equipment in the country that borders Saudi Arabia.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen branch of Osama bin Laden’s network, has claimed responsibility for the attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to ignite explosives hidden in his underwear as his flight from Amsterdam approached Detroit.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Friday that Yemen presented a regional and global threat as an incubator and potential safe haven for terrorism.