The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is seeking closer cooperation with China, as the alliance charters a course toward the future.?

Foreign and defense ministers representing the 28 nations of the organization gathered in Brussels on Thursday to discuss the alliance's new Strategy Concept.

"It makes sense to extend our range of consultations to also include countries like China and India in our regular consultations," said NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen, before the meeting.

The Strategic Concept is an official document that outlines NATO's purpose, nature and fundamental security tasks.

NATO has had, until now, six Strategic Concepts since its establishment in 1949, with the latest one having been issued in 1999, before the Sept 11 attacks.

But the security setting has changed dramatically in the past decade, leaving the current document inadequate for the alliance to cope with new security threats.

"NATO's core mission, to protect the 900 million citizens of (its) countries from attack, must never change but it must be modern defense against modern threats," said Rasmussen.

The new Strategic Concept, to be unveiled at NATO's upcoming summit in Lisbon next month, is likely to draw attention to the deployment of forces to missions outside its traditional theater of operations in Europe.

It is not the first time that top NATO leaders have called for reaching out to emerging powers such as China.

Rasmussen made similar remarks early this year at the annual Munich Security Conference, and Michael Ruhle, NATO's senior political advisor, wrote a piece in April on NATO's need to engage with non-alliance members.

NATO has had formal talks with Russia within the NATO-Russia Council, but so far had no such organized dialogue with China, one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

However, there is slim hope that China will put on its own agenda the cooperation with the NATO, according to Tao Wenzhao, a professor at the Institute of American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"NATO has been eyeing deeper ties with China for some time, because they are looking for substantial help from China to ease things up in Afghanistan, a nine-year-old war that has required the deployment of 150,000 multinational troops," Tao said.

But even if Beijing is supportive of anti-terrorism measures, China remains a country firmly committed to non-alliance. Moreover, it is unlikely China would carry out in-depth cooperation with NATO, an outcome of the cold war, said Tao.