MOSCOW. Jan 22 (Interfax-AVN) - The State Duma may put off a ratification vote on the adapted Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, a senior Duma deputy said on Thursday.
In explaining the reasons for such postponement, Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the Duma's International Affairs Committee, said that some NATO states had "absolutely groundlessly" linked their own ratification of the treaty to the withdrawal of Russian military bases from Georgia and to the evacuation of Russian weapons from Moldova's breakaway Transdnestr region, as well as Russia's "large group of questions" about Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia planning to join the accord.
"This ratification will be complicated. I am not ruling out the possibility that it will once again be removed from the priority schedule," Kosachyov told a news conference at the Interfax main office in Moscow.
"Many problems arise here in connection with the fact that our partners - the same NATO states - link their own ratification of this document to the nature of negotiations on the withdrawal of Russian bases from the territory of Georgia and the resolution of the Transdnestrian problem. In our view, these linkages are absolutely groundless.
"We have a large group of questions as regards the accession to this adapted treaty of four states - the Baltic states and Slovenia."
Kosachyov said his committee planned a "wide-scale" parliamentary hearing, inviting various agencies to take part, "in order to ensure an open, public debate on this issue, which directly affects the national security interests of the Russian Federation."