Brussels - The suicide bombing that left at least 21 dead in Russia's autonomous republic of Ingushetia underscores the need for NATO and Russia to join forces in the fight against global terrorism, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Wednesday.

In a letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Rasmussen also expressed his sincere condolences to the families of the victims of Monday's attack against the local police headquarters.

"This tragic loss of life and suffering underscores yet again the grave danger that terrorist threat poses to all of us," Rasmussen wrote.

"NATO strongly condemns all forms of terrorism and stands ready to continue our cooperation on the fight against this scourge in the frame of the NATO-Russia Council
(NRC)," Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen's letter came at a time of thawing relations between NATO and Russia following last year's conflict in Georgia.

The new NATO chief met Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, for the first time last week, with the two vowing to step up military cooperation in Afghanistan.

Other areas of cooperation currently being explored by NATO and Russia include the global fight against nuclear disarmament and against piracy.

Rasmsussen has said he wants to improve the workings of the NRC, the forum for direct dialogue between the sides, with an oft-postponed first meeting at ministerial level expected to take place towards the end of the year.

Islamist insurgents are suspected of carrying out the bombing in Ingushetia, which created a deep crater at the police headquarters and destroyed buildings in a half- kilometre radius of the blast's epicentre.

Violence in the northern Caucasus, which also includes the Russian republics of Chechnya and Dagestan, has soared in the past months, with high-ranking government officials and human rights activists among the victims of the violence perpetrated by Islamist militants, criminal gangs and Russian forces.(dpa)