MOSCOW. July 21 (Interfax) - The United States has not communicated any written proposals for a dialogue on future arms control to the Russian side, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Friday.
"There has been no written proposal in the form that you probably have in mind, a note or a personal letter, none whatsoever. But naturally, we have studied the text of the statement made on this matter by the U.S. president's national security advisor, and we gave corresponding comments earlier," Ryabkov told reporters on the sidelines of an annual meeting of the friends of the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund.
"I'd like to say that we are not ready to and will not be conducting a dialogue on this kind of basis, which the Americans are now offering, because they disregard several key aspects in this whole configuration; in particular, first of all we must make sure that U.S. policy, which is fundamentally hostile to Russia, is changing for the better from our perspective. This is far from what is happening, and I would say we are instead seeing the opposite process. The anti-Russian element [of its policy] not only dominates, it is getting worse within U.S. policy and exceeds all conceivable limits, and with all the related risks, big risks. This is one aspect of that," he said.
"And the other aspect is the following: we won't be able to discuss the subject of arms control in a so-called compartmentalized format, i.e. by isolating only several elements which the U.S. is interested in from the entire set of issues on the current agenda, and forgetting or removing other aspects that are no less important to us, at least theoretically, than [the ones] which interest the U.S. I mean strategic stability and factors affecting it need to be addressed comprehensively," he said.
"But again, this will only be possible once there is some change for the better in our relations overall. Ukraine and things going on around it - and we've also talked about it many times - is just one, yes an important one, but only one part of the wholly anti-Russian course being pursued by Washington," Ryabkov said.