Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Sunday
that Russia and the United States should show the leadership in
building a new international arms regime.
It was time to replace the existing SALT 1 (Strategic Arms
Limitation Talks) arms limitation treaty with a new regime for the
control and reduction of weapons of mass destruction, Ivanov told a
group of high-profile diplomats at a key security conference in the
southern German city of Munich.
"As I see it, this is precisely an area of international
relations where Russia and the United States not merely could, but
are directly obliged to show leadership," he said.
"Sooner or later, we will have to start working in a
multilateral format since none of us here, I am sure, has any
doubts about the importance of multilateral barriers to WMD
(weapons of mass destruction) proliferation," he said.
"Russia will firmly protect its national interests, but not by
establishing military blocs or open confrontation with its
opponents," he added.
Meanwhile, Ivanov urged Western countries to decisively abandon
ideological prejudice against Russia, which he said might trigger a
new round of Cold War.
"It is time we should decisively abandon all approaches that
have long divided our world on ideological grounds," Ivanov
said.
Ivanov underlined that some nations, long with "double
standards" against Russia, have the potential to "return to the
containment policy."
"Some states strive to exploit anti-terrorist activities as a
pretext to achieve their own geopolitical and economic goals," he
said.
About 300 high-profile diplomats, including U.S. Defense
Secretary Robert Gates and the European Union's foreign-policy
chief Javier Solana, discussed a range of the world's most thorny
issues during the three-day annual meeting, which closed on
Sunday.
(Xinhua News Agency February 11, 2008)