Russia is disappointed by Washington’s approach to talks on renewing the START I arms treaty, which expires next year, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak said in an interview published on Sunday.
“Today the situation is disappointing. Our colleagues have a different view of the task at hand,” Kislyak was quoted by the Russian news agency Interfax as saying when asked about consultations with the United States on renewing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).
START I was drawn up by the United States and the Soviet Union to limit each side’s intercontinental nuclear arsenals and was ratified in 1994 after modifications to take account of the Soviet collapse.
It has a 15-year lifespan and so expires in December next year, although there is an option to renew. Kislyak said Moscow wanted to take all “useful elements” from the treaty serving both sides’ interests and reach a new accord that would “maintain reliability, stability and predictability in the strategic sphere.”
The US side set more store by another strategic weapons treaty, the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), he said. In contrast, “at the moment, we’re more worried about the future, namely what will happen after 2009 in our relations with the United States in the strategic sphere,” he said.
Russia and the United States have been at loggerheads over US plans to extend a missile defence system to the Czech Republic and Poland. Washington says the plans are directed at “rogue states” such as Iran but Moscow says they threaten Russia’s security.
Russia last year abandoned the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty that set limits on troop levels on the continent. President Vladimir Putin has also threatened to abandon the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which eliminated Russian and US shorter and medium range nuclear missiles.
Meanwhile, a Russian news agency said on Sunday that Moscow’s envoy to Nato warned Poland against accepting a US missile defence site, invoking memories of its World War II plight. The reported comments follow Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski’s trip to Washington, where he said Poland had reached an agreement in principle on plans for a US missile defence system on Polish territory. “The Polish colleagues must be reminded of their recent history, which indicates that attempts to place Poland ‘on the confrontation line’ have always led to tragedies. That way Poland lost nearly one third of its citizens during World War II,” envoy Dmitry Rogozin was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.
“I was sure this horrible lesson would not be wasted and Poland would plan its foreign policy relying on friendly relations all along the borderline,” Rogozin was quoted as saying. The comments, purportedly made in an interview with Interfax, could not be confirmed through Rogozin’s office.
Poland was invaded by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939. Sikorski said in Washington on Friday that the two sides had agreed in principle on the plan to deploy US missile defence elements after he had received assurances that the United States would help Poland strengthen its short- to medium-range air defences. The two sides did not elaborate on the terms of their agreement, and it remained unclear whether the United States had made specific promises to provide air defence systems.
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