WASHINGTON, January 11. /TASS/. The US delegation in Geneva has established no concrete timeframes for its negotiations with Russia on security guarantees, US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has told reporters.
"We didn’t set out a specific timetable for anything. Certainly, the Russians have said that they’d like to move swiftly," the diplomat, who headed the US delegation to the talks, said during a phone briefing on Monday. "We had said to the extent that there are actions we can take, there’s work that can be done, we are happy to move as swiftly as possible."
According to Sherman, issues such as arms control cannot be solved in just a day or even a week. "They’re generally quite complex, very technical, and take some time. But we’re certainly ready to move as expeditiously as one possibly can in these circumstances," she said.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told reporters earlier in the day the Russian-US and Russian-NATO dialogue on security guarantees must not be delayed or allowed to drag for months and years.
The Russian-US consultations on security guarantees were held in Geneva on Monday. On January 12, a meeting of the Russia-NATO Council will be held in Brussels and the OSCE Permanent Council will gather for a meeting in Vienna on the following day. The central topic of these meetings will be Russia’s initiatives on security in the Euro-Atlantic region.