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Russia outlines six principles for strategic arms
reductions
Interfax
Moscow, 20 January: The announced radical reduction of Russian and US strategic offensive weapons should guarantee the security of both states in equal measure, the first deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, Col-Gen Yuriy Baluyevskiy, said in interview with Interfax on Sunday [20 January]. Last week Baluyevskiy, as the head of a Russian military delegation, held talks in Washington with representatives of the Pentagon leadership on the issue of strategic offensive weapon reductions.
According to him, at the consultations "the Russian delegation clearly outlined six principles in its approach to the problem:
1. The principle of equal security of the sides.
2. Transparency of the nuclear policy of the two states.
3. Interdependence of strategic offensive weapon cuts and strategic defensive
weapons.
4. The irreversibility of strategic offensive weapon cuts.
5. Monitoring of the strategic offensive weapons reduction process.
6. Cooperation aimed at finding mutually-acceptable decisions, which are
understandable by the sides, and financial means for the liquidation and
destruction of strategic offensive weapons that are being radically
reduced."
Baluyevskiy said disagreements remained in the positions of Russian and American military experts on the issue of strategic offensive weapon reductions.
"The intention of the USA to store rather than destroy nuclear weapons removed from delivery vehicles is the basic disagreement in our approaches to the process of strategic offensive weapon reductions," the general said.
Thus, according to him, the USA is trying to reduce the process of radically reducing strategic offensive weapons to a simple lowering of nuclear weapon readiness".
"A new concept - tactically deployed nuclear weapons (on delivery vehicles - Interfax) - is being introduced. All the remaining nuclear weapons that are to be removed from delivery means will be held in storage and, as the US side argues, may be returned to delivery vehicles in a week or more in case of emergency," he said.
"I think", Baluyevskiy continued, "that neither we, nor the world public will understand such cuts."
"It is not a reduction. It is the transfer of part of the strategic nuclear forces from one condition into another," he said.
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