Agence France-Presse, Russia will not withdraw from the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty at an emergency meeting it has called with NATO this month, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said June 6.
“At the conference, this question will not be raised. The conference was called to serve as a forum where we will set forth our concerns once again,” Interfax quoted Lavrov as saying.
In April, President Vladimir Putin rattled Western observers by calling for a freeze on his country’s compliance with the treaty, which limits deployments of tanks and troops in countries belonging to NATO and the former Warsaw Pact in eastern Europe.
Moscow called for a meeting with NATO on the treaty for June 12-15, citing “serious problems that have arisen with the NATO nations’ implementation of the treaty,” according to a foreign ministry statement.
The two sides have been at loggerheads over the treaty since 1999, with NATO saying Russia has failed to honor commitments to withdraw troops from Moldova and Georgia.
Russia in turn accuses the U.S. of a military buildup near its borders, with new army bases in Romania and Bulgaria and plans to deploy a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.
