MOSCOW. Sept 5 (Interfax) - Moscow has no intention to initiate a dialogue over creation of a new regime of the control over conventional armed forces in Europe (CFE), the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
"Nevertheless, by our estimates, opportunities for creating a new CFE regime do exist. However, Russia is not going to initiate a dialogue on this topic, let alone express demands on this score, as the article claims," the ministry's department of information and press said the ministry's website, commenting on an article written by the German foreign minister and published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.
"We shall see how Germany's allies, whose efforts stalemated and froze the dialogue on conventional arms, will respond to its exhortation. For its part, Russia is invariably open to discussion of international security and stability issues on the basis of equality and respect for each other's interests," the ministry said.
"For a long time, we called repeatedly, at various forums and in bilateral communications, for the CFE regime to be substantially renewed and brought in line with the current military political realities on the continent," the ministry said.
"As is known, that was because the previous CFE Treaty had become hopelessly obsolete and a return to it impossible, but its adapted version, passed at the OSCE's [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] Istanbul summit in 1999, whose ratification we'd been urging with our western partners for almost eight years, eventually never took effect," the ministry said.