MOSCOW, November 8. /TASS/. The United States has presented no satellite images to back up its allegations Russia has deployed intermediate range missiles in its territory, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the 4th Moscow Nonproliferation Conference on Friday.
"We’ve been asking the Americans for several years to present concrete facts that might confirm the alleged violations, but they have emphatically refused to do so," Lavrov said. "Nobody has ever shown us satellite images, which in my opinion are the sole way of confirming the charges."
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Also, Lavrov regards as well-founded the reports of US plans for deploying missiles in the Asia-Pacific Region.
"We are aware that in the process of the discussion that has developed in the public space in connection with the United States’ declared intention to station these missiles in the Asia-Pacific Region, Japan and South Korea were mentioned. Seoul said it had never heard such speculations, but there is no smoke without a fire," Lavrov pointed out.
In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the leaders of a number of NATO countries with a proposal for imposing a moratorium on the deployment of intermediate and shorter range missiles in Europe and other regions. Similar messages were addressed to a number of countries outside NATO, including China. NATO and US officials replied they saw no sense in such a moratorium, because in their opinion Russia had allegedly deployed intermediate range missiles in its territory already.
Predictions as to NATO's actions in view of Russia’s missile moratorium initiative
As the top diplomat added, NATO signaled that it won’t respond to Russia’s initiative on introducing a moratorium on deploying intermediate and shorter-range missiles in Europe.
"President [Vladimir] Putin in his personal messages to the leaders of NATO states and the Asian-Pacific Region’s countries called for joining a moratorium on deploying intermediate and shorter-range missiles. The North Atlantic Alliance has not given a clear answer. Moreover, they made it clear to us that NATO won’t accept this," Lavrov said.
Russia’s top diplomat stressed that Washington’s withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty would trigger negative consequences, noting that both sides had mutual claims against each other. "Instead of solving them in a professional, constructive and business-like way, our American colleagues were only busy searching for pretexts to dismantle the INF Treaty," Lavrov went on.
According to him, particular and realistic measures suggested by Russia, which are aimed at alleviating concerns in order to save the treaty, were rejected rather arrogantly. "It’s regrettable that most NATO members obeyed Washington’s demand and did not accept our invitation to make sure that US claims were far-fetched," he stated.
Meanwhile, Lavrov emphasized that in order to keep the window of opportunity open "to maintain predictability in the missile field, Russia made a decision not to deploy ground-based intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles until US missiles of the same class are deployed to these regions."
On August 2, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said that Washington was officially withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. He explained this decision by Russia’s refusal to meet the US demand to destroy its new 9M729 cruise missiles, which, according to the US and its NATO allies, violated the INF Treaty. Russia rejected these demands, saying that the technical parameters of these missiles complied with the treaty’s provisions.
The INF accord, signed by the Soviet Union and the United States on December 8, 1987, took effect on June 1, 1988. It covered deployed and non-deployed ground-based missiles of intermediate range (1,000-5,000 kilometers) and shorter range (500-1,000 kilometers). Washington accused Russia of violating the deal on numerous occasions, but Moscow firmly dismissed all accusations, countering the US claims by expressing grievances over Washington’s non-compliance.
Stance on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
The United States’ stance on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is destructive, the Russian foreign minister believes. "We regard the achievement of progress in enforcing the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty as politically important for preserving nuclear nonproliferation. That it has not taken effect yet 23 years after its was opened for signature is a major problem, of course," Lavrov stated.
"The responsibility for this rests upon the eight of the 44 countries that are still to ratify the treaty to let it take effect. And, of course, particularly destructive is the stance of the United States, which in its nuclear doctrine documents stated outright that it would not seek its ratification," Lavrov said.
He added that "this endangers the future of this most important document, which is the sole effectively verifiable international agreement on terminating nuclear tests."
"There is no alternative to it and there cannot be any," the minister claimed.