MOSCOW, April 22./TASS/. The West has been using the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) for years to put pressure on ‘dissenting’ countries, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a video address to participants in the Moscow Nonproliferation Conference.
"The main problem is that the Western countries have used the treaty for years to address political agendas unrelated to nuclear non-proliferation. In other words, they sought to bring pressure to bear on or stage direct interventions against 'dissenting' countries and step up their control over nuclear programs of non-members of the Western bloc," the top diplomat said.
"These actions are evoking a response from non-nuclear states, which put forward exorbitant nuclear disarmament requirements," he went on to say. "We can also count in the initiatives by certain NATO countries trying to increase their control over the Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenals under the guise of disarmament," Lavrov added.
He also stressed that moves to undermine the existing arms control and non-proliferation system "are affecting the stability of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons," while problems related to the implementation of the NPT provisions "are not only persisting but also tend to mount."
"The latest two NPT review cycles culminated in their final documents being blocked. In the first case, this was done by the US, Canada, and the UK. In the second, we witnessed a disgusting 'spectacle,' where the collective West (including the abovementioned countries) took to filling the documents with patently unacceptable formulas having no relation to the NPT, something that led to their inevitable blocking," Lavrov said.