U.S. Arms Negotiator Marshall Billingslea may have backed down from the U.S. demand that China participate in arms control talks between the U.S. and Russia but the talks themselves are still bogged down. “China’s participation in possible future talks, discussions in various formats, on arms control, in particular, nuclear arms control, was touched upon by the U.S. representatives in Vienna all the time, so the topic is still on the table,” Ryabkov said, yesterday, reported Sputnik. He noted that at the same time, Russia’s position on the matter, including the mandatory participation of the U.K. and France in the future talks in case of the expansion of the list of those involved, did not change.
“We have not reached a consensus on this whole range of issues. And again, in this regard, we have to state that, accordingly, the optimal way [to hold talks] is a bilateral, the Russian-U.S. one, in order to avoid filling the agenda with topics that, by and large, depends on what decisions on this topic will be made and whether they will be made at all in Beijing, London and Paris. Therefore, this part seems to have been worked out in a completely predictable manner and there are no shifts, changes in the approaches of the parties,” Ryabkov said.
As for the treaty extension, the situation is complicated by the fact that Washington has set a number of conditions to a hypothetical decision in favor of the extension. “Formally, Billingslea is, of course, right, saying that this issue is now being worked out bilaterally, and the ‘Chinese factor’ does not directly affect the extension of the START Treaty,” the diplomat said.
At the same time, the official observed that Russia’s position voiced by President Vladimir Putin regarding the extension without preconditions for five years in the form in which it was signed, “has not changed in any way.”
“Secondly, we do not see how this treaty could be changed, especially in the time remaining before its expiration, given the United States’ unwillingness to take into account our priorities and our concerns in the field of nuclear missile arms control. We took their conditions, their formulated wishes into consideration, but on the U.S. side, too, must go their part of the way, do some homework. So far, everything is still bogged down,” Ryabkov concluded.
