March 17, 2014

RUSSIA PUSHING FOR MULTILATERAL ARMS CONTROL TALKS

By ExchangeMonitor

Moscow has been hesitant to formally participate in another round of arms control negotiations with the United States, and a senior Russian official appeared to throw another hurdle in the way of those talks. In comments to Russian news agency RIA Novosti, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov suggested that Russia was not interested in arms control talks unless other countries, namely France, the United Kingdom and China, were involved. “We cannot endlessly negotiate with the United States the reduction and limitation of nuclear arms while some other countries are strengthening their nuclear and missile capabilities,” Ryabkov told RIA Novosti. “Making nuclear disarmament a multilateral process is becoming a priority.” Russia has raised other issues about arms control talks, mainly focusing on U.S. missile defense capabilities and the presence of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, and has been hesitant to engage the United States in negotiations beyond the New START Treaty, which established a 1,550-warhead ceiling on the strategic deployed arsenals of both countries.

Russia and the U.S. hold about 90 percent of the total nuclear weapons in the world, and the Obama Administration is believed to favor at least one more round of bilateral talks with Russia before involving other nuclear weapons countries. While President Obama has made a world free of nuclear weapons part of his nuclear security agenda, Russia is less enamored with the goal, and in his comments to RIA Novosti, Ryabkov hinted that Moscow was less skeptical of the nuclear-free push. He told RIA Novosti that while Russia had not “shunned” nuclear abolition, it should not be a priority, “otherwise we will simply undermine the very foundation of our national security.”

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