Russia's foreign minister lashed out at the United States on its missile defense cooperation Wednesday, calling Washington's response to Russian proposals as a major backtrack from previous agreements.
The United States has withdrawn a proposal for the constant Russian monitoring of planned U.S. missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic, and has rejected the idea of jointly evaluating threats that would trigger activation of the system, Sergei Lavrov said.
"A serious rollback from what we agreed upon was evident" in the document Russia received from the United States, Lavrov told a news conference here.
"The issue no longer concerns the permanent presence of Russian officers at possible facilities of the third positioning district in the Czech Republic and Poland, but now deals with sporadic visits," Lavrov said.
Moscow has strongly resisted the U.S. missile shield plan in Europe, saying it is an obvious threat to Russian security. Washington said the plan is intended to stave off the threat of attacks from what it calls "rogue states."
The U.S. side "expressed readiness to take Russia's concerns into account," but at the same time it did not give up plans to deploy missile defense elements in the Czech Republic and Poland, Lavrov said.
At an October talks in the "two-plus-two" format joined by defense and foreign ministers of the two countries in Moscow, Russia and the United States failed to reach any agreement on missile defense in Europe, but made a decision to continue discussions at an expert level.
Russia's top military commander, Yury Baluyevsky, said Russia would never agree to a role as a "cost-free addition" to the U.S. missile shield, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.
Baluyevsky is currently in the U.S. discussing missile defense cooperation, as well as the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), which Western countries consider a cornerstone of European security. Moscow has imposed a moratorium on the arms control treaty, calling it discriminatory and outdated.
The move, widely seen as a response to the U.S. missile shield plan and NATO's expansion, has exacerbated tensions amid already strained relations between Russia and the United States.
The U.S. missile defense plan, consisting of a radar station in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland, has also caused anxieties among European countries about the continent's security.
Source: Xinhua
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