#5 - RW 11-19-04 - RW Home
Russian defence minister says nuclear weapons "safely protected"
RIA Novosti

Moscow, 17 November: Russia has everything necessary to safely protect nuclear armaments from all sorts of unauthorized access and to prevent possible breakdowns at nuclear facilities, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov has said speaking at a conference of top-ranking commanders of the Russian armed forces.

"We have everything necessary to reliably protect nuclear armaments from all sorts of unauthorized access and to prevent possible breakdowns at nuclear facilities," the minister said.

Ivanov reminded the audience that earlier this year the special exercises Avariya-2004 [Incident-2004] were held together with the Federal Agency for Atomic Energy. The exercises were attended by 49 observers from 17 NATO member states. [passage omitted: more on the exercises]

"Despite repeated pronouncements from abroad about our alleged problems with nuclear weapons security, our partners in the Russia-NATO Council were able to witness the opposite," Ivanov said.