MOSCOW. Oct 25 (Interfax-AVN) - Russian and German lawmakers met in the State Duma lower house of Russian parliament on Thursday to discuss nuclear and chemical security issues, member of the SPD faction in the German parliament Gert Weisskirchen told Interfax-Military News Agency.
German lawmakers are seriously concerned about problems of nuclear submarines and chemical weapons scrapping in Russia. "We increased allocations for scrapping Russian chemical weapons and maintaining safety of nuclear weapons in the draft 2002 budget. At the same time if Russia does not make serious progress towards solution of those problems it will be hard to back up such decisions in the future," Weisskirchen said.
Russia indeed has problems with the scrapping of nuclear submarines especially with their active nuclear zone, Andrei Nikolayev, chairman of the State Duma defence committee, told Interfax-Military News Agency. Nevertheless, placement of nuclear waste is carried out in full compliance with international regulations, he said.
No foreign aid, including provision of funds, will solve the problem for Russia, Nikolayev stressed. Russia must do it on its own, and it is doing it. RUR3.5bn (USD118.36m) has been allocated for this purpose in 2002 and RUR6bn (USD202.9m) will be allocated in the future.
Speaking about safety of nuclear submarine voyages, Nikolayev said that combat patrolling of Russian submarines and their oceanic voyages would continue. Russia has repeatedly proposed to the United States, Great Britain and France to sign an international agreement on safety of nuclear submarine voyages, but got no response, he said. Besdies, Russian submarines are mostly patrolling coastal areas, while those of the United States are sailing thousands of miles from home, the lawmaker added.