Moscow - Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called a Russian
attack on the United States 'absolutely unimaginable', but accused
Washington of dangerously shrugging off the nuclear arms control
regime set at the end of the Cold War, in an interview published
Tuesday.
Lavrov ridiculed the recent Western commentary that has fretted
over Russia renewing Soviet-era military alliances in South America,
with planned Venezuelan-Russian military exercises in the Caribbean
this year.
'Russia and Venezuela have no plans of attacking anybody, they
cooperate on the basis of international law ... (such reports) invent
absolutely unimaginable hypothetical scenarios,' Lavrov told
the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper ahead of talks with Venezuelan
Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro in Moscow on Tuesday.
International security cannot be based on guarantees of
friendly intentions, Lavrov said, in a dig at Washington's claims
that a missile defence system it plans to deploy in eastern Europe is
not aimed against Russia.
'Among the US leadership and that of several other countries
absolutely loyal to Washington's line, the prevailing geopolitical
ideology is of doing everything possible to contain Russia,' Lavrov
said.
The foreign minister accused the US of failing to seek a
replacement for the START treaty, a key Cold War arms control accord
that expires next year.
Last year, Russia pulled out of the Treaty on Conventional Armed
Forces in Europe (CFE) amid differences with the United States,
raising fears that the move marked the unravelling of a network of
treaties setting checks on each nation's nuclear arsenal with the
end of the Cold War.
'I think this would be a most dangerous path,' Lavrov said,
reiterating his commitment to new rounds of the so-called '2+2' talks
between Russia and the US foreign and defense policy chiefs.
A Russian navy battalion is on route to Venezuela to hold military
exercises in US-patrolled waters. In September two nuclear-capable
Russian bombers flew exercises over the Caribbean in a show of force
that looks to exacerbate an already high-strung security standoff
with Washington over Russia's war with US ally Georgia last month.
USA
Your Talkback on this Story