Munich - The world needs to take advantage of new diplomatic opportunities to try to put together a new security infrastructure, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Friday.

"The Cold War has been over for 20 years - which means it is high time that we start breaking out of that way of thinking, a way of thinking that sometimes accompanies us like a long shadow out of the past," he said, during opening speeches at the Munich Security Conference.

To that end, Steinmeier said he plans to summon defence experts to Berlin in June to discuss ways to revive and strengthen the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). The treaty, which limits the levels of military hardware in Europe, has been in limbo since 2007, when Russia announced plans to withdraw from the treaty.

However, he said simply rejuvenating that treaty would not be enough and called for a broader coalition designed to plan further, more concrete, security apparatuses in the future.

"The old dream of a shared security area stretching from Vancouver to Vladivostok, which has been discussed in this very room multiple times, is not just going to fall from heaven. I fear it will remain a dream if we seek its fulfillment through a legally binding treaty, with long years of negotiations and the uncertain outlook of ratification in more than 50 parliaments."

Steinmeier said the time is right for seeking a new way to achieve this new security apparatus, given a new US administration which has stressed its willingness to enter into negotiations on prickly issues. Steinmeier also noted that now is a good time to reach out to Russia, given that its president, Dmitry Medvedev, is from a younger generation less influenced by the Cold War than his predecessors.

Nonetheless, he said that any new security architecture could not replace NATO. At the same time, he said it was time to summon a group of "eminent persons" to review NATO's role for the next decade. (dpa)