MOSCOW. Feb 17 (Interfax) - Russia will send a reply to the United States on security guarantee proposals both on paper and in an electronic form, and the response will be published on Thursday, several hours after it is sent, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"We are planning to send it both on paper and in the electronic form. [The response will be published] practically several hours after we send it to the Americans, we are planning to do it today," Lavrov said at a press conference on Thursday.
"The negotiations will continue on every aspect of our proposals," he said.
"We have noticed that the second part of the U.S. response to our initiative gives consent to discuss the issues and to reach agreements on the matters we have been offering to our NATO colleagues for years as the topics of urgent negotiations, yet they have been dodging them in every possible way. I mean an agreement on limiting or, preferably, preventing the deployment of ground-based intermediate- and shorter-range missiles in Europe, abstaining from the deployment of other offensive systems wherever they could pose a threat, promoting confidence building measures and reducing military risks, in particular, during military exercises, flights of military planes and navigation of warships. Clearly, all that should be done through contacts between the military," Lavrov said.
Moscow seeks to prevent a situation where "particular clauses of the package are isolated" and claims that all problems have been solved are made, he said.
"We will not solve these problems unless we agree on key issues, on which the security in Europe depends, such as NATO's non-enlargement to the east, non-deployment of offensive weapons, and respect for the military-political configuration that existed in Europe when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed. Our arguments are based [...] on the indivisible security formula approved at the highest level, only one provision of which the West seeks to use to its satisfaction. That won't do," Lavrov said.
"So, we will politely but insistently ask our colleagues to give individual responses in the national capacity and to explain their current understanding of the documents signed earlier, which have not been cancelled by anyone yet, and the way they are planning to fulfill them," he said.