The "core task" of NATO will remain the collective defence of its members, the military alliance's secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Wednesday, after meeting in Brussels with Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, DPA reported.
Baltic states have often fretted about their big neighbour Russia, especially since it invaded Georgia in the summer of 2008 to "defend" two breakaway regions that are loyal to Moscow.
However, requests for NATO to update its emergency planning to prepare for any eventual Russian military movement in the Baltics have met with resistance from Western European nations such as Germany, fearful of upsetting already fraught relations with Moscow.
Rasmussen said article 5 of the NATO treaty, which states that any member under attack will be defended by the rest of the alliance, "also implies a visible presence of NATO all over allied territory."
He also said he and Grybauskaite agreed that it was of "the utmost importance" for that principle to be reaffirmed in NATO's strategic concept, due to be adopted by the alliance's leaders at a summit in Lisbon in November.
Grybauskaite said Lithuania was "open for discussion and cooperation" with Russia, "but based on realism and constructive dialogue and reciprocity from both sides."
Relations between NATO and Russia, which were suspended after the Georgian war, formally resumed in December. The two sides are now discussing ways to cooperate on Afghanistan.
Lithuania's president said her country would maintain its 220- strong contribution to NATO's military mission against the Taliban- led insurgency in the country "until 2013."
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