The meeting of the NATO-Russia Council on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly comes as the 28-nation Atlantic alliance waits for Russia to respond to an invitation to a summit in Lisbon on November 20.

"The foreign ministers could discuss the prospect of cooperation in anti-missile defence, the evaluation of common threats to their security and Afghanistan," NATO spokesman James Appathurai told AFP.

Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said the Russian national security council would examine the summit invitation announced by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen last week.

NATO and Russia held their last meeting at the level of heads of state and government in April 2008 in Bucharest.

The Lisbon meeting would take place after NATO leaders hold their own summit in the Portuguese capital November 19-20.

Russia and Western nations remain divided over the disarmament of conventional weapons in Europe, the situation in Georgia following the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war and NATO's eastward enlargement.

But the two sides have identified common interests in the face of threats such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation and drug trafficking as they gingerly revive ties that had sunk to a new low following the war in Georgia.

On the Afghan front, Russia cooperates in the fight against drug smuggling and allows the transit of supplies, except weapons, for NATO troops through its territory. NATO wants Russia to provide helicopters to the Afghan government.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said last week that NATO should invite Russia to cooperate on a missile defence system at the Lisbon summit.

The NATO-Russia Council was created in 2002 as a forum for the two former Cold War foes to hold a dialogue on security issues.

"The record of the past eight years shows how far we've come," said Rasmussen, who has championed improved relations with Moscow since he took the helm of NATO in August 2009.

"We disagree every once in a while, and fundamentally on some issues, such as over Georgia," Rasmussen said.

But he added: "We've learned not to let that overshadow the importance and the potential of this relationship, to make us all safer."

The NATO chief wants Russia to be included in plans to build an "inclusive" missile shield.

"If Russia and other countries feel like they are inside the tent with the rest of us, rather than outside the tent looking in, it will build trust," he said in Rome.

Anti-missile defence systems already in place within the NATO alliance fall under a US shield that has missile interceptors in the United States, Greenland and Britain.

Plans under the previous US administration for it to be extended into eastern Europe, notably with installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, drew strong protests from Moscow. It feared the project could upset the conventional and nuclear balance to its own detriment.

But President Barack Obama last year scrapped the plan in favour of a "phased, adaptive approach" involving sea- and land-based missile interceptors and sensors based partly on a reassessment of the threat from Iran.

"Unless we make a clear offer to Russia, we would risk that it will feel, rightly or wrongly, kept out of the tent," Rasmussen said.

earlier related report
Concrete blocks out for Iranian leader's visit to New York
United Nations (AFP) Sept 21, 2010 - New York's 42nd Street resembled downtown Baghdad on Tuesday as US authorities laid on major security for a visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Concrete blocks were laid across the street from Ahmadinejad's hotel -- a stone's throw from the UN headquarters. Behind the blocks, a huge refuse truck sprawled across the road in case a suicide bomber or any other attacker could be tempted to try to reach the building.

Security guards lined the streets in preparation for Ahmadinejad's speech to the Millennium Development Goals summit, taking place even as political directors from the six powers leading international efforts against Iran's nuclear drive hold a new meeting to discuss next moves in the atomic showdown.

Ambassadors from the Western powers are expected to walk out when Ahmadinejad speaks.

"It has become a tradition. It is a question of who walks first," said one western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The New York Post tabloid called the president the "reviled, Holocaust-denying leader" in an account of the precautions being taken for Ahmadinejad.

Neither the Iranian mission nor the president's staff at the hotel would comment on the visit.

The Post reported that US secret service agents pulled their guns on one photographer, Jason Nicholas, who cut across police lines to chase Israeli President Shimon Peres in a motorcade as it passed by. Nicholas was released without charge.

The hotel "has been turned into a sealed fortress" with "ramped-up security forces standing guard amid specially installed bulletproof windows, airport-style metal detectors and powerful anti-terror weapons," the Post reported.

"Ahmadinejad has access to a private elevator on his floor, a source said, and everything he touches is supplied by his aides. His rooms' windowpanes were swapped for bullet-proof glass."

While in New York, Ahmadinejad has the same right as the members of Iran's diplomatic mission in the city. They can go anywhere within 25 miles (40 kilometers) of the mission, and Ahmadinejad is certainly taking every opportunity to get his message across.

He has pointedly held several interviews with US media to declare again that Iran is not seeking a nuclear weapon.

Ahmadinejad has also demanded that the United States release eight "illegally arrested" Iranians after his country freed Sarah Shourd, one of three American hikers held captive for more than a year.

"The US government should make a humanitarian gesture to release the Iranians who were illegally arrested and detained here in the United States," he said on ABC television. Washington has undiplomatically rejected the demand.

The eight Iranians are accused of different crimes, including violating sanctions against Iran.

Ahmadinejad has stirred international controversy with his calls for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and other fiery declarations.

Each year for his visit to the UN summits, the New York tabloids have a field day calling him a "madman," "idiot" and a "Holocaust-denying, nuke-coveting, terrorist-aiding nut."

The US administration has made it clear there are absolutely no plans for President Barack Obama to have any contact with the Iranian leader in New York this week.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met Ahmadinejad on Sunday and urged him to "engage constructively" with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States to find a negotiated settlement to the nuclear showdown.

The Western powers accuse Iran of seeking a nuclear bomb, but Tehran insists its research is only to generate civilian power.

The UN Security Council has passed four rounds of sanctions against Iran for refusing to halt uranium enrichment and recent UN reports have been increasingly critical of Iran's attitude to international nuclear inspectors.

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