Russian Upper House Speaker Hopes for “Calm” NATO Response to CFE Move

Text of report by Russian news agency Interfax

Moscow, 14 July: Federation Council speaker Sergey Mironov has supported the position of the head of state, [President] Vladimir Putin, who has signed a decree introducing a moratorium on [Russia's] participation in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE Treaty).

“Any sovereign state that believes steps need to be taken for its position to be respected would have done what Russia did,” Mironov told Interfax.

At the same time he expressed the hope that the reaction of NATO member states to Russia’s move would be “adequate and calm”. “They should all realize that Russia is unilaterally fulfilling all its obligations under the CFE Treaty, while many countries, which signed the treaty as members of the Warsaw Pact and are now NATO members, for some reason believe they can not join the treaty and therefore not ratify this document,” Mironov said.

He went on to add that Russia had every right to do whatever it thought fit on its own territory. “Suspension of the CFE Treaty does not mean that we shall now start moving around armoured troops. We are simply showing that there is a need to treat each other as partners,” Mironov said.

He went on to add that Russia had not withdrawn from the CFE Treaty but had just introduced a moratorium, in the hope that “partners in the treaty would react adequately, would ratify this document and start implementing its provisions”.

Speaking of Russia’s possible withdrawal from the treaty in the event its message was not heard, Mironov said that current laws envisage a special procedure for that, whereby a CFE Treaty member state can give notice to the participants in the treaty, and after a certain period of time it can be officially considered that the party has left the CFE Treaty.

“But for the time being we won’t be making any hasty steps, and will be waiting for reaction from our partners, including NATO,” Mironov said.

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