MOSCOW. May 14 (Interfax-AVN)- First deputy chief-of-staff of the Russian Armed Forces Colonel General Yuri Baluyevsky has confirmed that the new arms reduction treaty that is expected to be signed by the presidents of Russia and the United States in late May in Moscow will outline the prospects for possible bilateral agreements linking strategic offensive and defensive arms.
"The document that will be signed by the president will reflect this idea," Baluyevsky told Interfax on Tuesday. The general did not rule out that the work on some provisions of the treaty might continue until President Bush's visit to Russia.
He said he disagreed with the opinion of some Western media outlets that absence of a clause regulating the future of dismantled nuclear warheads and means of their delivery is Russia's loss. He suggested that his opponents read the START-1 treaty more carefully and quoted U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell as saying that the United States would stick to the treaty.
Head of the State Duma's committee for foreign affairs Dmitry Rogozin told journalists that the arms reductions treaty that is to be signed by Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush may be later supplemented by new agreements, including documents that would bind strategic offensive and defensive arms.
Rogozin said that Baluyevsky and head of the Foreign Ministry's department Mikhail Lysenko on Tuesday attended the session of the parliamentary commission on arms reductions, and briefed deputies on the main provisions of the future treaty.
"I think that our representatives at the talks have done a good job," Rogozin said. The committee's head added that this project is "even something bigger that I expected."
At the same time, members of both houses of the Russian Federal Assembly would like their potential to be used wider in elaboration of such important treaties, the committee chairman said. "The Federal Assembly was in an information vacuum, and though the talks had been in progress since late February neither Russian nor U.S. lawmakers were involved in them. I do not think that this is right," he stressed.