Page 1 of 7 MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION INFORMATION AND PRESS DEPARTMENT 32/34 Smolenskaya-Sennaya pl., 119200, Moscow G-200; tel.: (499) 244 4119, fax: (499) 244 4112 e-mail: dip@mid.ru, web-address: www.mid.ru Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Ryabkov Interview to the Voice of Russia about the Work on the New START Treaty and Prospects for Its Ratification, April 11, 2010 12-04-2010 Question: Sergey, you have just returned from Prague, where the new Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures to Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms was signed. For more than six months you had been involved in the negotiation process on the Russian side. From your perspective, to what extent have the interests of Moscow been upheld in the document, given the fact that many of the new missiles will be subject to reduction? Ryabkov: To begin with, we are, of course, satisfied with the results of the negotiations. The Treaty is the fruit of the coordinated and intensive efforts of many of our agencies. Our negotiating team, headed by Ambassador Anatoly Antonov, did a very good job. We are grateful to all our experts for this work and our US partners for the achievements in the ten negotiation rounds. I can say that one day after the signing of the Treaty and the protocol to it, the delegations in Geneva completely finalized the so called tertiary level documents. These are technical protocols and other texts which are attached to the overall package of documents for their submission for ratification by both parties. That is, the process is complete, on which we congratulate all its direct participants. Of course, the Treaty fully meets the interests of the Russian Federation. This is not to say that it is ideal. I ask for a clear grasp of this subtlety. The complexity of the negotiation process lay exactly in finding the right balance of interests. We had our own preferences, the Americans had theirs. Often those preferences did not dovetail, there was sparking in the negotiations, there were nervous moments. But we never lost the main thread: it was required that we unconditionally fulfill the directives of Presidents Dmitry Medvedev of Russia and Barack Obama of the United States to reach agreement. And that compromise treaty was eventually worked out. And in such a way that the solutions achieved in it fully meet both the interests of the Russian side and the instructions that had been formulated and given to our negotiators before the start of the negotiation process. Question: Both Presidents after the Treaty signing pointed out that the ratification of the
Page 2 of 7 new document must be synchronous. But is there any specific timetable established for its ratification? Ryabkov: As far as I know, the US Senate this year will have a rather difficult work calendar, due to the fact that midterm elections are to be held in America in the fall. And so the work of considering a number of major documents including this agreement with the Russian Federation (being an international agreement, it is subject to ratification) will be conducted within a fairly short period of time. We would like to see the Treaty ratified and enacted before the fall midterm elections in the US. Otherwise, taking into account the calendar of the US Congress, the ratification process could drag out until next spring, which is not desirable. We need to quickly enact the text, which aims to strengthen strategic stability and will serve us reliably for the next ten years. And synchronization is important as a measure to prevent unwanted circumstances in which one side ratifies the document and the other not. This is not a question of any linkage to the US parliamentary timetable. It does not mean that our hearings will be smooth sailing. We have a different procedure that involves both chambers of the Federal Assembly, after all. To appeal within approximately the same time frame - that's what is at stake. Question: How will the strategic offensive arms situation be regulated until the new document comes into force? Ryabkov: There is the provisional application mechanism generally accepted in international practice. We will be guided by it. Customary international law requires that a country which has concluded a treaty shall, until its formal entry into force, take no action contrary to its aims and its logic. This is normal and stems from common sense. And so we are going to do, by applying the Treaty provisionally. But it is clear that its enactment has become one of the main tasks. Question: The day before, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty would present additional opportunities for the future development of the bilateral partnership between Moscow and Washington. Does this mean that there will be further reductions, or it is the countries interaction in other areas? Ryabkov: There are several aspects. First, we ve got a very good springboard for moving forward many issues of the international disarmament and nonproliferation agenda together with the Americans. The positive impact of the Treaty is already being felt through the comments and feedback that we hear. And it will hopefully influence the work of upcoming international forums, including the May Review Conference of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The second positive aspect: we have an opportunity to redistribute political and intellectual resources and to focus on other areas of our bilateral relations with the United States. Progress has not been identical everywhere. The work of the Presidential Commission and
Page 3 of 7 of its working groups is generally advancing quite well. But the pace of progress varies among the groups. There are areas where we need to straighten out what is left unfinished. This was also discussed at the Presidents meeting in Prague. The Chief Executives attention and that of the coordinators of the commission, the Russian Foreign Minister and the US Secretary of State, can now be more focused on these issues. So far we have largely been absorbed in the process of developing the new START Treaty. We need to diversify relations with the US and to put them on a firmer footing. We should not reduce everything to questions of strategic stability and arms control. Despite the importance of these topics, the agenda of Russian-American partnership cannot be onedimensional. We must develop it. The third positive point I would like to emphasize is the possibility to take a broader look at the challenges that confront us directly in the field of arms control. We must nevertheless someday begin in earnest rebuilding the viability of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). We have to address issues in areas such as security and confidence building measures in the conventional arms sphere. We need a thorough approach to the task of preventing an arms race in outer space. For each of these areas there are relevant ideas and suggestions. Our position is echeloned and logical and objectively should be of interest to the partners. And now this is what we must concentrate on. There are many problems in the nonproliferation sphere: universalizing the NPT regime, implementing the resolution of 1995 on the establishment of a WMD-free zone in the Middle East, to which Russia has paid and will continue to pay close attention, and much more. So now, having lifted from our shoulders the burden of negotiations and achieved an important, politically significant result, we can come to grips with other issues, to which, frankly speaking, we never really got around; this also holds true for the Americans. Question: And how about creating a missile defense system together with the United States? Given that Russian President Medvedev did not rule out that possibility, don t you think that Europe should play a more active role in this direction? Ryabkov: We have never ruled out the creation of such a system. Russian President Medvedev in Prague confirmed this position. I would like to recall that it includes a whole array of components that just cannot be left behind the scenes in discussing this theme. Before we really get down to creating such a global missile defense system, we must go through several stages. They are known. It is a joint assessment of the challenges of missile proliferation, which we with the Americans are already occupied with. Then, it s figuring out what economic, diplomatic, political, and other nonmilitary measures can be used to ward off these risks and challenges. And then, if these measures do not help, you can begin to think about the military-technical architecture of the system. And here the contribution of other countries would be very important. It will be necessary to create a socalled antimissile pool of nations in which countries with real capabilities in this area technological solutions, advanced developments, etc. could participate. Together, we could
Page 4 of 7 solve many problems more efficiently. But this raises questions about decision-making and use-of-force procedures. There can be no monopolism, and all of this should also be determined and formulated through cooperation. This is the essence of the proposal of Russian President Medvedev for the creation of a global missile defense system. Question: The proposal of the Russian president has been around a long time. Is there any response from Europe to these ideas? Ryabkov: The latest example is the statement by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen about the possibility and the desire to build up cooperation in this field. We welcome this attitude, although NATO, strictly speaking, is not a European but Euro- Atlantic organization. But many European countries are in the alliance. Such cooperation on our part through the Russia-NATO Council, though in the rather limited area of theater missile defense (TMD), had long been underway and led to interesting results. Then, because of the certain circumstances, it was suspended, but now we are moving towards its resumption. That is, the possibilities are there and we feel an interested response from the European partners in that regard, and then from the United States as well. Question: A new executing agency has been established the Bilateral Consultative Commission (BCC) which will act as a compliance and implementation body for the new Treaty on strategic offensive arms. Who will be in this commission and when will it begin work? Ryabkov: The Bilateral Consultative Commission is a body more technical than political. Although political questions will inevitably arise in it due to the specifics of the material with which it will have to work. The level of work of this structure is sufficiently down-toearth. This is not ministers, not politicians. It is experts from agencies involved in purely practical matters. The rule on the creation and functioning of this commission is laid down. See full text of the Treaty and its Protocol, placed on the Kremlin and Russian Foreign Ministry websites. Our primary imperative now is to bring the Treaty into force. This will be our point of departure. Then we will start the work of the BCC. So far the chief task is ratification. Question: That is, the commission will work only after the ratification of the new START Treaty? Ryabkov: Yes. Question: Before the Treaty signing, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that in the quest for a Global Zero it is necessary to take into account the various aspects of global security that may erode strategic stability. This primarily concerns the ban on placing weapons in space. From your point of view, given the recent signing of the Treaty, as well as the publication of the new nuclear doctrine of the United States, is Washington ready, under the new strategy, to support the initiative of Russia and China? Ryabkov: Despite the importance of the question that there should be no weapons in space,
Page 5 of 7 let me note another thing. As we move towards reducing nuclear weapons arsenals, we will pay ever more attention to other factors. Namely: the capabilities of the parties in the area of missile defense, the participation or nonparticipation in the disarmament process of other states possessing nuclear weapons, including states that are not officially recognized as such, and their willingness to put their arsenals under appropriate supervision. Finally, a substantial factor requiring unconditional inclusion is considerable imbalances in the conventional arms sphere. The compensatory role of nuclear weapons is a well-known fact. And the lower the ceilings on nuclear weapons, warheads and their delivery vehicles, the greater the impact on the security of any state the situation in the conventional arms sphere will have; especially when you look at it from the vantage point of the creation of nonnuclear strategic offensive arms systems. For it is about the means of delivery created for nuclear charges about the most powerful and long-range, accurate and effective ones. In destructive capacity and combat effectiveness these nonnuclear systems come close to equaling nuclear weapons. Therefore, they should not be discounted, but rather should be considered. Everything, up to and including the resolution or non-resolution of particular regional conflicts, will have significance in this regard and exert influence on global strategic stability. We are not naive people, and at issue are too serious things that we now, on a wave of SOA success, could jump into the maelstrom of giving out unfulfillable promises. On the contrary, the new START Treaty, which became a kind of test for responsibility and the depth of approach to these issues, reminds us that the next move would be even harder; much harder. Everyone should be responsible and look at the situation impartially. The renovated US nuclear doctrine contains a number of quite interesting provisions. It testifies to the continuing development of military-political and strategic thought in Washington. But I want to note that this document offers no free promises to anyone. The United States reliance on nuclear forces continues. Yes, movement towards imparting to its strategic nuclear potential a more compact and secure form is professed. Quantitative parameters will be reduced, but the appropriate means will be assuredly maintained in a combat-ready state, and some new systems are going to be introduced. This is, above all, about modernization, although some decommissioning will also be done. We will analyze and match all this in the most direct way against both the course of the fulfillment of the new Treaty and our own plans in this area. Therefore, efforts in this direction will be difficult enough, let alone the fact that the issues of non-placement of weapons in outer space have always been hard in our dialogue with the Americans. And I anticipate that they will remain so in the future. Easy solutions can t be expected, even in the wake of the SOA success. Question: Will these issues be raised at the Washington summit and the NPT conference in New York? Ryabkov: The Washington summit has a clearly defined, limited agenda. This is a summit
Page 6 of 7 on nuclear security, by which is meant, above all, physical nuclear security. That is, secure storage and use of nuclear materials, the protection of nuclear facilities; matters relating to more effective counteraction against possible attempts of nuclear terrorism. This is a very serious theme, and we must make vigorous efforts, on a global scale, to ensure that all nuclear materials are securely protected, particularly from falling into the hands of all sorts of extremists. We will consider the issues of nuclear disarmament, nuclear nonproliferation and peaceful uses of atomic energy at the NPT Review Conference in May. Questions of preventing an arms race in outer space, confidence-building measures in outer space and other topics that relate to this part of our disarmament agenda these questions are within the purview of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, of the UN General Assembly First Committee and of UNGA plenary sessions. There are different formats and there is no reason to change anything here. We look forward to progress in each of these areas. Question: But at the same time Iran was not invited to the summit in Washington and as an alternative on April 17-18 will host its own conference on nuclear disarmament. Its motto is Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for No One. What does Russia think of this alternative conference? Is Tehran trying in this way to belittle the importance of the meeting in Washington? Ryabkov: We believe that the more opportunities there will be to engage in open and deep professional dialogue on these issues, the better for all. Too much has accumulated in this area of problems and tangled knots to be able to say: Let's not meet, it s all so clear: the experts will talk on the phone and with this we ll conclude our efforts. The initiative of US President Barack Obama to hold this summit was launched a year ago. We felt that it was useful. The host country determined the range of invitees. Everyone is aware of the difficulties that have long existed in bilateral relations between Washington and Tehran. The Iranian side, in turn, by holding its own conference aims to provide its platform for dialogue on troubling and urgent issues like those relating to access to the benefits of the peaceful atom. The Russian position is responsible and logical, and it is the same for all. Here there is no double bottom or the desire to change something based on where what is discussed, nor can there be. Hence we are working with everybody in a very worthy manner and with confidence in our own correctness, and will conduct this dialogue with both the US and Iran. We believe that both events will turn out to be useful, help increase international understanding and consensus around these issues, and to some extent, contribute to the NPT Review Conference in New York. Question: That is, the Russian side is prepared to take part in the Tehran conference? Ryabkov: The Russian side has not declined the invitation. We are going to participate in this meeting.
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