MOSCOW, December 20. /TASS/. Washington is unlikely to reject talks with Moscow on security guarantees yet will try to introduce its conditions and stall the process, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told journalists on Monday.

"Let’s see if there is a refusal," the senior diplomat said, replying to a question on the matter. "I think, frankly speaking, that there won’t be a rejection as such, yet there will be an attempt to surround their consent with various suggestions, conditions, various additional ideas. Just to throw the ball into our court. This would be natural given the stance that the Americans take," he explained.

"I think that they will try and turn all of this into a sluggish process of sorts, and we need this immediately, since the situation is very difficult, [even] critical, and has a tendency to become even more complicated, so we cannot dawdle, we are ready to start these talks immediately," the deputy foreign minister stressed. "The Americans will, perhaps, try to surround this with additional conditions, some extra demands, and talk about various formats. So, we’ll see," he concluded.

On December 17, the draft agreements between Russia and the US on security guarantees and the measures of ensuring the security of Russia and NATO member states were made public. These drafts were submitted to the Americans at a meeting at the Russian Foreign Ministry on December 15.