MOSCOW. Oct 4 (Interfax) - Russia expects to find political and diplomatic ways not harmful to global strategic stability in settling the missile defense issue with its Western partners, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko has said.
"I assume that we have not yet exhausted the diplomatic way. We are going to have substantive consultations with the Americans and a substantive conversation within the NATO-Russia Council. We expect to make a decision that would enable us to find political-diplomatic ways of resolving the issue in order to avoid the danger of skewing the strategic stability that now exists," Grushko said in an interview published in Kommersant.
"Russia favors looking for ways to eliminate nonexistent threats not by deploying some systems but by assessing the missile threats in a realistic way. It should be noted that the missile threat itself without weapons of mass destruction is quite a hypothetical thing," he said.
"If you assume that the countries America suspects have been unable for years to develop long-range systems, that is, strategic missiles, for lack of technology, the likelihood that they could develop weapons of mass destruction to arm these systems is even more remote. There is no urgent need to promote the systems the U.S. is currently working on, together with the Czech Republic and Poland. Instead, it is necessary to deploy joint political-diplomatic efforts to strengthen the nonproliferation regime of weapons of mass destruction, missiles, and missile technology," he said.
"Moreover, the persistence with which these projects are being promoted makes one think that some other goals are being pursued," Grushko said.
"The matter originally implied the desire to shield America from Iranian ballistic missiles, then the U.S. started saying that it was prepared to shield its allies and ensure Russia's security," Grushko said. "However, our calculations show that they will not shield the entire territory of Europe. And, besides, the global missile defense system that the Americans are building in the world, including the space component, definitely affects Russia's strategic potential," he said.
"Stability over the past years has been based on a balance of forces, and there are no reasons so far to change this method of providing security," Grushko said.