VIENNA, May 4 (Itar-Tass) —— Efforts of Russia and the United States are not enough for further nuclear disarmament, Russian Foreign Ministry Security and Disarmament Department Director Mikhail Ulyanov said on Friday.
He addressed the first session of the Preparatory Committee of the 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation (NPT) Review Conference.
“The comprehensive liquidation of nuclear arms remains problematic as long as the process is limited to member countries of the nuclear five. Russia is prepared for further advancement in verifiable and irreversible reductions of nuclear armaments under the NPT commitments,” he said.
The goal of full nuclear disarmament “can be achieved only through an integrated approach, with the preservation of strategic stability and the observance of the principle of equal and indivisible security,” the diplomat said, adding that a number of international conditions needed to be met.
One of these conditions is nuclear disarmament of all states possessing nuclear arsenals and their joining of the Russian and U.S. efforts, Ulyanov said. It is also necessary to prevent the deployment of armaments in orbit, to ensure the absence of re-deployable nuclear potentials and to prevent the build-up of the so-called ‘compensatory potential’ and the unilateral development of strategic missile defense systems fraught with the erosion of strategic stability and the misbalance of checks and balances, which keep the global parity in conventional armaments, alongside solving other international problems, including regional conflicts, he said.
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty must enter into force and the operation of key multilateral disarmament and non-proliferation instruments must be ensured, he said.
“A global campaign for the full ban on nuclear armaments has been mounting. An increasing number of initiatives are being made with regard to nuclear disarmament. They contain plenty of elements similar with the Russian ideas. We pay due attention to such ideas and maintain a constructive dialog with the interested sides. Russia is fully aware of its special responsibility for the fulfillment of the NTP obligations. It will continue do the utmost for solving the historic task of a stable and safe world, free from nuclear weapons,” Ulyanov said.