Nato Refutes Kremlin'S Charges

NATO officials yesterday denied Russian charges that the alliance was trying to prevent the integration of former Soviet republics, saying the newly independent states could have good relations with everyone.

NATO does not regard at all the relationship between these countries and NATO and the relationship between these countries and Russia as mutually exclusive, one source said. One does not exclude the other, the source added.

The West as a whole, and the leadership of NATO in particular, is opposed to any form of integration between the newly independent states the republics of the former USSR, the Interfax news agency quoted Sergei Yastrzh- embsky, President Boris Yeltsin's press secretary, as saying.

Yastrzhembsky , in Moscow, was quoted as saying that a tour NATO that secretary-general Javier Solana was making of former Soviet republics was part of a covert anti-Moscow policy.

Russia and NATO are at loggerheads over NATO's plans to offer membership to some of the former Warsaw Pact states such as Poland and Hungary. Moscow says this would jeopardise its security and weaken Yeltsin's government. Yastrzhembsky is reported to have said that there are no grounds to say that the positions have started to become closer, adding that the ball is in NATO's court.