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Diplomat blasts US ‘poorly-prepared, politically-loaded’ WMD-free Middle East plan

According to an expert, "one can hardly find anything constructive" in the plan

© AP Photo/Evan Vucci

MOSCOW, July 3. /TASS/. Washington’s document on a Middle East zone free from weapons of mass destruction (WMD) contains no constructive proposals and is more akin to a politically-loaded gesture, Vladimir Yermakov, Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Department, said following the Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

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"As for the US working document [on a WMD-free zone in the Middle East], one can hardly find anything constructive in it," he told the PIR Center.

"It is a far cry from those highly-professional documents that US diplomacy used to be rightly proud of. It is more like a poorly-prepared politically-motivated gesture."

Yermakov added that many of the committee members disagreed with the US approach and shared the Russian delegation’s stance. "We continue to see here, at the current Preparatory Committee, profound support for Russia’s constructive position and everything we said at the first Preparatory Committee," he stressed.

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