The United States plans to continue discussions with Russia on further arms cuts, including in conventional weapons, after the ratification of a new strategic arms reduction treaty, a senior Pentagon official said.
"We are hopeful that in coming days the [new START] treaty will be ratified and soon thereafter we want to pursue the follow-on talks aimed at further reductions," Alexander Vershbow, Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs at the U.S. Department of Defense said Tuesday.
"And we want to bring in non-strategic weapons as well as non-deployed weapons into the discussion," Vershbow told a panel of U.S., Polish, and German government officials and Russia experts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC.
Vershbow, a former ambassador to Russia, also said that the United States was hoping to reach an agreement with Russia on a framework for negotiations aimed at resuscitating conventional arms control and modernizing the CFE regime on the principle of reciprocity when it comes to transparency and reductions.
"We will insist on the renewed commitment to respecting key international principles such as respect for internationally recognized borders," he said.
Russia imposed a unilateral moratorium on the CFE treaty in December 2007, citing concerns over NATO's eastward expansion, U.S. missile defense plans for Europe, and the alleged refusal of the alliance's new members to ratify the adapted treaty.
Russia has repeatedly said it will resume its participation in the CFE if NATO countries ratify the adapted treaty, signed on November 19, 1999 and so far ratified only by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Moscow considers the original CFE treaty, signed in December 1990 by 16 NATO countries and six Warsaw Pact members, to be discriminatory and outdated since it does not reflect the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc, the breakup of the Soviet Union, or NATO eastward expansion.
WASHINGTON, December 15 (RIA Novosti)
