Russia denies arms surge plan after pact freeze
Russia denies arms surge plan after pact freeze
Moscow: A Russian defence official said the country does not intend to build up armaments when it suspends participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty, news agencies reported yesterday, while another official warned that Russia could pull out of the key Cold War-era pact altogether.
The 1990 treaty set limits on the deployment of conventional armaments by Nato and Warsaw Pact countries.
But the disintegration of European Communism and the collapse the next year of the Soviet Union changed strategic balances, and a revised treaty was worked out in 1999.
However, Nato countries have not yet signed the new version, demanding that Russia fulfil its treaty obligations to withdraw its forces from Georgia and the Moldovan separatist region of Trans-Dniester.
Partners' behaviour
President Vladimir Putin, angry at the Western resistance, announced this year that Russia would suspend participation. The suspension takes effect from December 12.
Once the suspension takes place "we will not build up the amount of armaments, of course, but everything else will depend on the partners' behaviour", Vladimir Nikishin of the Defence Ministry's international cooperation department told a hearing on the suspension at the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.
"After December 12, Russia will relieve itself of the obligation to honour the CFE. In practice, this may result in refusal to provide information or to receive or delegate inspections that the treaty provides for," he was quoted as saying.
Timeline:
- August, 1945: Japanese surrender; End of World War II.
- April 4, 1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) is founded to resist Communist expansion.
- August, 1949: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb.
- November, 1952: The US detonates the world's first hydrogen bomb.
- May, 1955: The Warsaw Pact is founded.
- August, 1961: Construction of Berlin Wall begins.
- uly, 1965: US commits combat troops to Vietnam.
- November, 1989: Berlin Wall falls.
- December, 1989: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George H.W. Bush declare at Malta conference that a long-lasting peaceful era has begun.
- October, 1990: Germany reunited.
- April, 1991: Warsaw Pact ends.
- August, 1991: End of Soviet Union.
- February 1, 1992: President George H.W. Bush of the United States and President Boris Yeltsin of the Russian Federation declare a formal end to the Cold War.
