October 12, 2007 (LPAC)--Speaking to reporters after the 2+2 meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov indicated that the two sides had not come to an agreement on any of the outstanding issues, but they had decided that the format of discussions would be made a permanent part of the relationship. "Our meeting today reaffirmed that all participants in this meeting realized this responsibility. We agreed to turn this format into a permanent one, and our American colleagues suggested that we meet in Washington in the United States in, say, half a year and to follow up on this work. We agreed that this mechanism will deal with the practical implementation of initiatives put forward by our two countries jointly and implemented jointly in the area of strategic stability. This primarily has to do with such areas as the prevention of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the strengthening of appropriate regimes, fighting with nuclear terrorism, and the development of cooperation in peaceful use of nuclear energy." Lavrov also indicated that the two sides agreed that the arms limitations negotiations, i.e. the INF Treaty format, ought to be expanded to also include other countries in the neighborhood.

On missile defense, the two sides would continue to discuss the issue on which opinions were still starkly divided. "Today, our American colleagues put forward a counterproposal which aims at finding common ground and common solutions. We will examine this proposal. Today, we asked questions, we got preliminary answers to these questions, and we agreed that our experts will go on working. And at this stage, we do not hide from our American colleagues that we now see at least two serious problems with their proposals. The first problem is that we still diverge about the assessment of the character of missile proliferation threat against which this third positioning region is creating -- is being created. And we agreed that our experts will focus on the elaboration of joint understanding of threats," Lavrov said. "And the second problem is that we believe for the joint work of Russian and American experts to be efficient, the plans to deploy the third positioning region in Europe should be frozen. There is no agreement on this, but we encouraged our experts to discuss the existing divergences in a very concrete and specific way," he said.

While the nature of the new U.S. proposals were not fully elaborated, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates indicated that they included having Russian observers at any of the sites indicated. In response to a question, Gates said, "We put forward some thoughts about the presence of individuals from both sides at sites so that there was complete transparency both at -- perhaps at third sites, but also in the United States, and if there are radars and other facilities here in Russia, that there would be a presence there, too. So some of the proposals affected the transparency and sharing of information," Gates said. Gates also indicated that the U.S. had put forward some ideas to deal with Russian concerns that the envisioned Polish and Czech installations might represent a future, rather than a present threat, i.e. with the placement at those facilities of a new generation of missiles. Rice said that the U.S. counter-proposal was still at a "conceptual" stage and that the `experts groups' would have to work out the details.