MOSCOW, November 16 (Itar-Tass) —— Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, has strongly dismissed the United States’ invitation addressed to Russia to attend missile defense tests to see that this potential would not be aimed against Russia.
“That’s what I’d call beating about the bush. It’s propaganda. It’s of no interest to us. A popular lecture on astronomy would be a much more informative pastime,” Rogozin told Itar-Tass.
The diplomat explained there was an effective ban, imposed by the Senate of the US Congress, on all measurements. The ban is effective for all states.
“May they first lift the Senate’s outright ban prohibiting any country from using telemetric equipment in relation to anti-missile system tests. Going to some place in the ocean and then standing there on a barge and looking through a binocular at missiles flying somewhere is of no interest to anyone,” Rogozin said.
He explained that “visually, from the surface, taking such measurements will be impossible.”
“We have said all this to the Americans. They do not let us place equipment on the interceptor missile. All that is just talking for talking’s sake. We are not interested,” the Russian diplomat said.
Rogozin also recalled that Russia still had no clarity and continued to express concern over the plans for placing NATO’s and US missile defense near Russian borders.
“Of course, we would like to know if we are being deceived or not when we are told that even technically advanced US interceptors will be unable to hit Russia’s heavy inter-continental ballistic missiles that are on duty in our strategic force. But we are unable to check this. We have said, let us plant telemetric equipment. They replied they couldn’t do that. So may they first sort things out with their own lawmakers,” Rogozin concluded.