By Padraic Halpin and Graham Fahy
DUBLIN, Nov 13 (Reuters) - EU leaders said on Friday that Europe's security structure should not be a subject for Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations, but they did not answer the question of who should speak for Europe in any future talks.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Russia would be open to European countries taking part in Ukraine peace talks if it saw they were ready to contribute to the peace process.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz described the Kremlin's comments as "the same old game" and said that Europe and the United States agreed on a clear message.
"There will be no discussions about Ukraine without Ukraine, and no discussions about Europe without Europe. Furthermore, there is no need to talk about European security architecture. We have that already," Merz told reporters during a summit of European Union leaders in Dublin.
Russian officials have called for a broad agreement on Europe's security architecture to be reached before tackling the specifics of the war. Before its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia demanded the withdrawal of NATO forces from countries that joined the alliance after 1997. NATO rejected the demand.
US negotiator Jared Kushner said in Moscow on Thursday that he had begun discussions with European partners on the continent's security architecture.
EUROPE PRIORITISES CEASEFIRE IN RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Russian calls for discussions about Europe's security architecture risked diverting attention from the need for a ceasefire. Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs called such discussions "a trap".
During a meeting on Thursday, leaders from Poland, the Baltics and Nordic states warned against brainstorming with the US or Russia about Europe’s security architecture, according to a European diplomat and a European official.
Forty European countries, meeting as a broader group in Dublin on Thursday, signed a declaration saying that any matter affecting European security should be decided with the involvement of Europeans.
EU leaders broadly agreed that Europe needed to speak with one voice, but did not settle on a single individual to do so. Merz said discussions would continue.
"There are established institutional forms of (EU) representation — Kaja Kallas, for instance, is part of this — but the E3 format has also proven very effective," he said, in reference to an informal security grouping of France, Germany and Britain, which is no longer an EU member but a prominent NATO ally.
"Moreover, we always include Italy and Poland," Merz added.
Representatives from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the EU attended Russia-Ukraine talks in Abu Dhabi earlier this week, where both Moscow and Kyiv cited some progress, though there was no sign of a breakthrough on key issues such as territory.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Britain, one of Europe's top three military powers, certainly had to be included in any future talks and that the five countries plus EU institutions would make sense.
"I'm quite flexible on that, so I think what we actually say is more important than the exact configuration of the people in the room," he said.
(Additional reporting by Lili Bayer, Inti Landauro, Foo Yun Chee, Miranda Murray, Charlotte Van Campenhout; writing by Philip BlenkinsopEditing by Gareth Jones)
