WASHINGTON, Jan 10 Reuters -- U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said on Monday that the United States was firm in pushing back on security proposals that are non-starters during talks with her Russian counterpart in Geneva, and added that Washington won't allow anyone to shut down NATO's open door policy.
U.S. officials had frank and forthright discussions with the Russian delegation over the course of nearly eight hours and is open to meeting again soon to discuss U.S. Russian issues in more detail, Sherman said.
The Russian delegation, led by the Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, laid out Russia demands first presented last month, including a ban on NATO expansion and an end to the military alliance's activities in central and eastern European countries that joined it after 1997, Sherman told reporters in a call after the meeting.
She said that the U.S. side was firm in pushing back on proposals that the West says are non-starters.
She said that the United States would not make any decisions for other countries without them and that they will not allow anyone to slam closed NATO's open door policy.
Nearly 100,000 Russian troops are gathered within the reach of Ukraine in preparation for what Washington and Kyiv say could be an invasion, eight years after Russia seized the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine.
Russia denies the invasion plans and said it is responding to what it calls aggressive and provocative behavior from the NATO military alliance and Ukraine, which has tilted toward the West and aspires to join NATO.
A diplomat from the State Department will meet with U.S. allies in Brussels ahead of a NATO-Russia meeting and an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe meeting in Vienna on Thursday.
The U.S. and Russian officials will talk about a way forward at the end of the week.