ORENBURG, October 3. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decree suspending the plutonium disposal agreement with the United States indicates that Russia no longer sees an opportunity for implementing this arrangement unilaterally, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"This indicates that Russia no longer regards possible to act on the provisions of that agreement on its own," he said. "President Putin and our experts have stated that more than once."
Peskov explained that "the American side has been implementing the provisions of that agreement in a way that allowed it to retain a retrievable potential regarding the plutonium and the amounts."
In his opinion, the United States’ implementation of the liabilities disagreed with the clauses of the agreement.
"Russia was implementing it for a long time on its own, but now, as follows from the presidential decree, and in view of the general tensions Russia believes that this type of situation cannot linger," Peskov said.
Putin ordered earlier on Monday the suspension of the plutonium disposal agreement with the United States over Washington’s unfriendly actions towards Russia.
The agreement with the United States was signed on August 29, 2000. It envisaged utilization of the excessive amounts of weapons grade plutonium in Russia and the United States, in particular, through the production of mixed oxide fuel (MOX) for nuclear power reactors, its conversion into non-weapons-grade form and burial. It was expected that either signatory would start eliminating the declassified amounts of plutonium in an amount of 34 tonnes. Russia processes weapons grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear power reactors.