Report: Russia Says It Won’t Amass Arms

By JIM HEINTZ

MOSCOW – A Russian defense official said the country will not build up arms when it suspends participation in a key Cold War-era treaty, news agencies reported Wednesday, while another official warned that Russia could pull out of the pact altogether.

President Vladimir Putin announced earlier this year that Russia would suspend participation in the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, which set limits on the deployment of conventional arms by NATO and Warsaw Pact countries.

Putin was angry that NATO countries have not signed a new version of the treaty, which was revised in 1999 to account for changing strategic balances brought by the fall of communism. NATO countries have demanded that Russia first fulfill its treaty obligations to withdraw its forces from Georgia and the Moldovan separatist region of Trans-Dniester.

Vladimir Nikishin, an official in the Defense Ministry’s international cooperation department, told a parliament hearing Wednesday that the suspension of Russia’s participation in the treaty on Dec. 12 will not lead to a build-up of arms, according to the news agency ITAR-Tass.

He added, however, that "everything else will depend on the partners’ behavior."

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak, meanwhile, told parliament there was still time to negotiate a resolution to the dispute. But he warned, "if the situation remains unresolved, we will ultimately terminate the operation of the treaty in the territory of Russia," ITAR-Tass reported.

Tensions persist between Russia and the West, most notably over U.S. plans to deploy elements of a missile-defense system in some former Warsaw Pact countries. The U.S. says the system is necessary to fend off possible missile attacks by states like Iran, but Russia has complained it changes the balance of power in the region and undermines its own missile deterrent.

Kislyak said Wednesday there was no progress on resolving that dispute, despite a visit by U.S. experts a day earlier to a Russian-operated radar station in Azerbaijan that Russia has offered as an alternative to the U.S. placing equipment in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russian officials have threatened to aim missiles at Europe if the U.S. elements are deployed there.