Moscow said on Tuesday it had “no choice” but to cancel talks with the US on the “New Start” nuclear arms control agreement, Russian state news agencies reported.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that while Moscow has other priorities, Washington only wants to discuss the resumption of inspections.
The situation in Ukraine was also influential in Russia’s decision to cancel at the last minute the bilateral commission meeting that was supposed to start in Cairo on Tuesday.
“The situation in general was such that we had no choice. The decision was taken at the political level,” Ryabkov told the RIA Novosti news agency.
“The Americans focused only on the resumption of inspections … meanwhile, solving other issues was and remains a priority for us,” Ryabkov told TASS.
“We’ve explained our position many times… but we haven’t seen the slightest desire on the American side to move in that direction.”
Ryabkov said Moscow would like to discuss the broader issue of “strategic stability”, which encompasses a number of fundamental issues between the two countries.
The agreement went into effect in 2011 and limits the number of nuclear warheads both countries can use. They would hold one-week talks to resume inspections under the agreement, which was suspended in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
source: Noticias
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