BERLIN -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was quoted on Wednesday as welcoming a suggestion he said had been floated by U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice for Russia eventually to join NATO.

"I have taken note of an extremely interesting suggestion by American Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. She has said in America one can imagine that Russia could be part of NATO one day," Schroeder told Germany's ***Stern*** magazine in an interview, Reuters said.

"I assume that she has said that in consultation with President Bush. I take that very seriously," the chancellor said in the interview due for publication on Thursday. "I find Frau Rice's idea particularly courageous."

"The existing NATO-Russia Council cannot be the last word in the relationship between NATO and Russia," Schroeder said. "Whoever thinks in longer historical dimensions cannot rule out NATO membership for Russia in the long term."

In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry said it wanted more details of Schroeder's remarks before commenting.

Schroeder gave no details of when or where Rice floated the idea, but made the comment in response to a question by ***Stern** about what he thought were the new topics of foreign policy.

Rice visited Moscow last month to try to persuade Russia to allow Washington to alter the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty so the United States can build a missile defense shield.

German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping tried to allay Russian fears of NATO's eastward expansion during a visit to St. Petersburg on Tuesday, saying enlargement was not directed against Moscow but aimed at strengthening cooperation.

But his Russian counterpart Sergei Ivanov told Scharping Moscow had no intention of dropping its opposition to NATO recruiting new members in Eastern Europe, which many in Russia see as a way of marginalizing Moscow.