GENEVA, February 25./TASS/. An aggressive foreign policy egocentrism demonstrated by the US is triggering dangerous tendencies across the globe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Conference on Disarmament on Tuesday.
"Regretfully, dangerous negative tendencies are accumulating in this century as a result of resurgent aggressive foreign policy egocentrism of one state. Washington’s withdrawal in 2002 from a most important for strategic stability ABM Treaty came as a heavy blow to the whole structure in the sphere of arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation," he said.
"A bid to dominate everywhere and impose its rules on the global community to the detriment of the interests of other states and international law has been prevailing in the US policy over the recent time," Lavrov stressed. "All multilateral agreements and mechanisms preventing this domination are declared obsolete and inefficient," the diplomat added.
Lavrov reiterated that 75 years ago the US dropped nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, "becoming the only state using these deadliest weapons and launching an arms race, whose consequences are still felt."
Much was done owing to joint efforts in the second half of the 20th century "to guarantee strategic stability and avert such tragedies in the future," the foreign minister stressed.
New START
Russia is still waiting for a reply from the United States to President Vladimir Putin’s initiative to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) without preliminary conditions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.
"It would be a wise step to extend the treaty as it would help prevent further degradation of the situation in the sphere of strategic stability, to avoid a complete collapse of the control and restrictive mechanisms in the nuclear missile sphere and to win time to discuss approaches to the methods of control of new weapons and military technologies," he told the Geneva Disarmament Conference. "Bearing this in mind, the Russian president offered the United States to extend the New START without any preliminary conditions. We are waiting for an answer."
The Russian top diplomat stressed that the Russian side was worried over the lack of certainty regarding the extension of this agreement. He recalled that last year he had already highlighted the importance of this treaty at the Geneva Disarmament Conference.
The Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (the New START Treaty) entered into force on February 5, 2011. The document stipulates that seven years after its entry into effect each party should have no more than a total of 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) and strategic bombers, as well as no more than 1,550 warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs and strategic bombers, and a total of 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers and strategic bombers.
The New START Treaty will remain in force for 10 years, until 2021, unless it is replaced before that date by a subsequent agreement on the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms. It can also be prolonged for no longer than 5 years (that is, until 2026) by the parties’ mutual consent.
Moscow has been calling on Washington to waste no time and renew the treaty, which it calls the gold standard for disarmament.