MOSCOW. July 8 (Interfax-AVN) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated that Russia is against the U.S. plan to deploy missile defense elements in Eastern Europe and that instead Moscow proposes a collective system for the assessment and neutralization of missile threats.
"The principles that have been agreed, are included in the joint understanding on strategic offensive armaments, and have been signed by the presidents of the Russian Federation and the United States record the need for the new treaty [on strategic nuclear weapons] to take account of and reflect the interconnection between strategic offensive armaments and strategic defense systems," Lavrov told Russian television channel Vesti on Tuesday.
"We will take the line that, if our partners decide to create an U.S. missile defense that is global in scope, it will undoubtedly make prospects for the further reduction of strategic offensive armaments highly questionable," he said.