VIENNA, May 12. /TASS/. The time for holding talks on the future of controls over conventional arms in Europe has not yet arrived and it is impossible to develop a new control architecture under conditions of a crisis of trust, Konstantin Gavrilov, head of the Russian delegation to the Vienna talks on military security and arms control, told TASS on Friday.

"Certainly, it is premature to speak of the future model in detail. Arms control is part of much wider relations between countries in the security sphere. It is impossible to build a new architecture of control over conventional weapons under the conditions of a critical lack of trust in Europe," he said.

He said that "sooner or later everybody will have to sit down at the negotiating table to determine the new European balance of power." According to Gavrilov, new agreements should be drafted from scratch. However, he did not rule out that some tried and tested elements of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) may remain relevant. In the process of shaping the new architecture of international security, Russia intends to be guided above all by its own national interests, the diplomat emphasized.

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the process for denouncing the CFE. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov was appointed as his official representative for the review of the CFE Treaty denunciation by the Russian parliament.

The CFE Treaty was signed in 1990 and amended in 1999. However, the NATO countries failed to ratify the amended text of the CFE and have continued to adhere to the 1990 provisions, based on the conventional arms balance between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. As a result, Russia was compelled to declare a moratorium on implementing the terms of the treaty in 2007.

On March 11, 2015, Russia suspended its participation in meetings of the Joint Consultative Group on the CFE Treaty, completing the process of suspending its membership in the CFE while remaining a purely de jure party to the treaty. Since then, Belarus has represented Russia’s interests in the Joint Consultative Group.