Russia has decided to suspend its participation in meetings of the joint consultative group on the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) from March 11, 2015, Anton Mazur, the head of the Russian delegation to Vienna talks on military security and arms control, said on Tuesday.
“Regrettably, NATO countries have preferred to dodge CFE provisions by means of the alliance’s expansion and use any pretexts to prevent the Agreement on Adapted CFE Treaty from coming into effect. This course pursued despite our repeated warning about its harmful impacts on the regime of control over conventional weapons led to the unavoidable result – Russia’s suspending the CFE Treaty in 2007,” Russian news agency TASS quotes the official as saying.
Western partners are in the habit of using this platform to address Russia with ritual empty calls to get back to the old CFE Treaty which infringes upon our interests, Mazur stated.
At that, he confirmed Russia’s readiness for joint work ‘on a new regime of control over conventional arms in Europe’.
“Russia asks Belarus to represent its interests in the joint consultative group,” Anton Mazur added.
Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was signed in Paris at the end of 1990 by NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries. The CFE Treaty set equal ceilings for each bloc on key armaments essential for conducting surprise attacks and initiating large-scale offensive operations. Collectively, the treaty participants agreed that neither side would have more than 20,000 tanks, 20,000 artillery pieces, 30,000 ACVs), 6,800 combat aircraft; and 2,000 attack helicopters.
A year later the USSR and the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist.
