Brussels  - Russia's top general on Thursday suggested redrawing the lines of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty in order to break the deadlock over the disputed document.

Five months have passed since Russia suspended its participation in the treaty, which limits the number of heavy weapons participants can maintain near one another's borders, and those months "were not used fruitfully," Russian Chief of Staff General Yuri Baluyevski said after a meeting with NATO counterparts in Brussels.

To break the deadlock, signatory states could agree to spread the so-called "flank regime" from two limited regions of Russia to the whole European territory of the country, Baluyevski said in what he described as "only my thoughts, not a proposal."

"Russia will have an opportunity to move its forces along the entire territory covered by the CFE treaty if such a proposal is adopted," he said.

The CFE treaty limits both the number of heavy weapons Russia can deploy across its European territories and the ways in which it can move them from place to place.

Particular limits are set on Russia's so-called "flank areas" around the eastern end of the Baltic Sea and along the southern border with Turkey and the states of the Caucasus.

Russia has long objected to the flank regimes, saying that it places more limitations on the movement of Russian troops than of other signatories. However, NATO members have always opposed the idea of getting rid of the flank regimes, as these are seen as key to the security of NATO flank members such as Norway and Turkey.

Baluyevski's proposal would sidestep those arguments by keeping the flank regime but spreading it to the whole of European Russia - thereby making it easier to move troops around Russia.

NATO officials reacted cautiously to the idea, saying that "any proposals that are made are at least the basis for discussion."

In January Russia announced that it was suspending its implementation of the CFE treaty in protest at US plans to site missile-defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russia recently ran a joint computer exercise on missile defence with NATO, but Baluyevski said that "Russia's view is that if we feel in the future that the evolution of missile defence in Europe is going to be integration with the US' global defence, we'll stop this kind of cooperation." (dpa)