MOSCOW. Jan 21 (Interfax-AVN) - The drastic reduction of strategic offensive weapons announced by Russia and the United States must equally provide for security of the two nations, Colonel General Yuri Baluyevsky, first deputy chief-of-staff of the Russian Armed Forces, said on Sunday.
Baluyevsky spoke to Interfax-Military News Agency soon after his return from the United States where he held consultations on strategic weapons cuts with the Pentagon leadership. approaches to the problem in six principles: equal security of the parties, transparency of nuclear policy of each nation, connection between the strategic offensive weapons subject to reduction and strategic defensive weapons, irreversibility of the strategic offensive weapons cuts, control over the process of the strategic offensive weapons reduction, cooperation in the search for mutually understandable decisions and funds for liquidation and destruction of strategic offensive weapons subject to drastic cuts," Baluyevsky said.
Military experts of Russia and the United States still have disagreements over issues related to the reduction. "A principal difference between the approaches to the strategic offensive weapons reduction process is the U.S. intention no stockpile rather than destroy nuclear weapons dismantled from their delivery means," the Russian military said.
By doing so, the United States "is trying to turn the drastic cuts of strategic offensive weapons into a simple reduction in the readiness of nuclear weapons," Baluyevsky noted.
"They introduce a new term - operationally deployed nuclear weapons. The rest of nuclear weapons will be dismantled from delivery means and stockpiled, so that it would be possible to reinstall them in the delivery means in a week or a longer period of time in case of emergency, as the U.S. party puts it," the Russian general said.
"I believe that neither us nor the global public will accept such reduction of strategic offensive weapons. It is not a reduction, it is a transfer of a part of strategic nuclear forces from one state into another," he stressed.