MOSCOW, March 23 (Itar-Tass) —— Russian President Dmitry Medvedev insists that the guarantees that the US missile defence system is not targeted against Russia should be fixed in a document, rather than friendly talks. The Russian president has made a statement at a scientific-practical conference of the Russian council on international affairs entitled “The Euro-Atlantic security community: myth or reality” in Moscow on Friday.
“The most important thing that we should hear one simple thing, hear and make it fixed that the missile defence is not targeted against Russia,” Medvedev said. “This should be fixed, but in a document, rather than friendly talks with a cup of tea or a glass of wine,” he said.
“Reliable guarantees based on military-technical and geographical criteria that the US missile defence is not targeted against Russian nuclear deterrence forces are essentially important for us,” Medvedev said earlier. “These forces and the system should comply with the goal to challenge missile threats, which could come from outside Europe and I will reiterate from outside Europe,” he underlined.
“I recall about the Russia-NATO summit in Lisbon in November 2010. Then it was voiced convincingly that the security of all countries in the Euro-Atlantic community is indivisible, and security of NATO and Russia are interrelated,” he went on to say. “I am also ready now to support this statement,” the president noted. “In general, the meeting was good in terms of its atmosphere and open debates on various issues,” he added.
“We proceed from the assumption that our relations with NATO are one of fundamental components of the modern security architecture in the Euro-Atlantic space that determine mostly strategic stability on the global scale. Meanwhile, certainly, cooperation between Russia and NATO cannot be established without the settlement of the problems, which concern vital interests of our countries,” he underlined.