UNITED NATIONS, November 6. /TASS/. Western countries are unwilling to support Russia's initiatives on space on the United Nations' platform for political reasons, Russian Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office and Other International Organizations in Geneva Andrei Belousov, who represented Russia at recent meetings of the UN General Assembly's First Committee in New York, told Russian reporters.
"Two Russian resolutions on space - our traditional document on not being the first to deploy weapons to space and a new draft document about further practical measures to prevent an arms race in space - received a sound majority of votes and were approved," Belousov emphasized. "However, unfortunately, our Western partners maintain an unproductive position on those draft documents, which stems from political considerations," he added.
According to Belousov, when criticizing Russia’s approaches to preventing an arms race in space, not being the first to deploy weapons to space and adopting a legally binding agreement on keeping outer space free of any kind of weapons, Western opponents "neither say anything new nor provide any serious arguments, clinging to those that had been overturned." "There have so far been no signals indicating that our Western partners will soon change their position, reconsider their attitude to our initiatives and agree to a substantive and really business-like conversation," the Russian deputy envoy noted. "Moreover, we can see that attempts are being made to sideline our initiatives," Belousov went on to say, pointing to "a British initiative on developing rules of responsible behavior in space." "We have serious questions concerning this initiative as the very concept of responsible behavior is unclear. Like a number of other countries, we are afraid that nations will eventually be divided into those who are responsible about their space activities and those acting irresponsibly, while the criteria for those value judgements are unclear." Russia "is very skeptical about this initiative," Belousov stated.