MOSCOW. April 23 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia has lost its main arguments at negotiations with the United States on the reduction of strategic offensive weapons, Major General Vladimir Dvorkin, head of the Center on Strategic Nuclear Forces under the Russian Academy of Sciences, told reporters on Tuesday.
According to the analyst, "Russia has a limited choice." "We can either sign agreements in May which do not meet our demands, i.e. by any cost, or reject them. And no improvements will happen in the future if we do not change our nuclear policy," he said.
Dvorkin believes that "reasons for it have not emerged overnight." "Unilateral reduction of our nuclear weapons was announced in 2000. Among the main components of the decision was the introduction of a new clause in the strategic nuclear forces development plans that envisaged reduction of the strategic nuclear forces' main component, which is the ground grouping that had always aroused serious concern in the United States," he said.
"Our position was very strong in a time when proposals on the START-1 treaty were being elaborated, but now that we have announced a unilateral reduction we effectively pushed the U.S. towards similar actions," Dvorkin said.
"A confession of U.S. analysis is characteristic - they said that they liked out plans but that we should not expect the United States to alter its decision on the National Missile Defense (NMD) deployment because of them. That is how we lost our basic arguments for negotiations with the U.S.," Dvorkin said.
He believes that "the Russian influence on Americans will now be limited to bans on poultry import from the United States."