MOSCOW, October 12. /TASS/. NATO’s "joint nuclear missions" contradict the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), a Russian diplomat said on Monday.
"Despite an agreement reached on Iran’s nuclear programme, serious challenges remain in the nuclear non-proliferation sphere," Mikhail Ulyanov, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry department for non-proliferation and arms control, said at the general political discussion held in the first committee of the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly.
"Apart from the Korean peninsula’s nuclear problem, special attention should be paid to the ongoing practice of NATO member states to carry out ‘joint nuclear missions’ in violation of clauses I and II of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). In all signs, both nuclear and non-nuclear NATO countries are building up cooperation in this sphere," Ulyanov, who is leading the Russian delegation to the UN General Assembly session, went on to say.
The Russian diplomat noted that the United States was going to modernize its nuclear warheads deployed in Europe soon while the European countries in the territories of which the warheads have been deployed were planning to renovate the fleet of aviation means of delivery of nuclear weapons in the near future.
"It means that NATO’s violation of its non-proliferation commitments is going to be infinite," Ulyanov added. "Despite official U.S. statements that the removal of the so-called Iran’s nuclear threat will eliminate all imperative motives behind the deployment of the U.S. missile defense system in Europe, the European Missile Defense project is being implemented at the previous pace," Ulyanov said adding that a thesis on preservation of some "nuclear threats", which made it impossible to turn away from the previously adopted anti-missile plans, had been brought into play.
"It should be noted that an adaptive approach to the creation of the missile defense system, if it can really be called this way, consists in adapting the arguments in favour of the project rather than its parameters," the Russian diplomat stressed.
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Moscow certain time is ripe for arms control UN GA declaration
Russia is for the adoption of a special declaration of the UN General Assembly session on arms control and disarmament, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s non-proliferation and arms control department, Mikhail Ulyanov, said in the course of the general political debate at the first committee of the 70th UN General Assembly session in New York. The text of his statement was published on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.
"We believe that at a time when the entire complex of arms control and disarmament agreements may be in jeopardy it is necessary to pay special attention to the task of strengthening global strategic stability as a cornerstone of international security and major prerequisite for arms reductions," Ulyanov said. "We are certain that time is ripe for adopting a special declaration of the UN General Assembly session on that score. Russia has proposed a corresponding draft document."
The Russian delegation is going to hold intensive consultations with all parties concerned on that score on the sidelines of the current session of the first committee, he added.