MOSCOW. March 21 (Interfax-AVN) - An increased secrecy regime regarding submarines is preventing the world's leading naval powers to conclude an agreement to prevent underwater incidents, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy Vladimir Kuroyedov told Interfax-Military News Agency.
"Whereas the surface forces have been regulated by a safe navigation agreement for over 30 years now, a great deal of work is still to be done and time spent on working out an agreement concerning submarines. Secrecy, which sometimes has nothing to do with security, is the main problem here. I think however, that security considerations are more important," said Kuroyedov.
He said the Russian and French navies have been working on individual aspects of such an agreement for the past two years (the 2003-04 Russian-French naval exercises involving nuclear submarines in the Barents Sea and the Atlantic). The Russian and French defense ministries have been informed of the results, he said.
"The Russian and French defense ministers confirmed their readiness to work further on this problem during their meeting in St. Petersburg in January, 2005. We hope this effort will be continued. But we are still far from having an agreement as a legal document," Kuroyedov said.
Russia has been advocating the conclusion of an agreement of this kind for the past few years. But neither the U.S., nor Britain, the two countries Moscow has been addressing in the first place, has given its consent even to start negotiating this issue, said Kuroyedov.