New Policy Paper Aims to Bind Russia Closer to Europe

"The aim must be to make the EU's political, economic and cultural linkages with Russia, its anchorage in a greater Europe, irreversible," the Handelsblatt newspaper reported Friday, quoting from a foreign ministry policy paper. The ministry confirmed the plans on Friday, according to German news agency dpa.

The paper mooted the idea of increased joint peacekeeping missions in third countries to boost ties, Handelsblatt wrote. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was expected to bring up the ideas at a meeting of his EU counterparts in Finland on Friday.

Germany will assume the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union from Finland on Jan. 1. The successive terms of the two countries, which both have close ties to Moscow, at the head of the EU offered a "window of opportunity" for a deeper strategic partnership, according to the paper.

Reorienting EU policy to the East

"A pan-European peace order and the resolution of important security policy problems from the Balkans to the Middle East can only be achieved with, not without, Russia." The paper referred to the current debate over controversial Iran's nuclear program in which Russia has been a key player.

Steinmeier had spoken out in favor of a change in EU foreign policy in a speech at the Heinz Schwarzkopf Foundation in Hamburg on Wednesday. "In the EU we need attractive and believable offers for our neighbors… We need something like a new EU 'Ostpolitik,'" he said.

The German foreign minister said the Finnish EU presidency would present a report on a reorientation of EU policy towards its neighbors by the end of the year, and that he hoped Germany would be charged with developing it further.

The term Ostpolitik refers to the policy of detente with Soviet-bloc countries which was initiated in the early 1960s by West German Foreign Minister Willy Brandt, who later became chancellor.