12 Sep 2019 13:42

Moscow ready to discuss with U.S. different solutions to New START issue - Ryabkov

MOSCOW. Sept 12 (Interfax) - Russia is ready to discuss with the United States alternative solutions on the issue of prolonging the New START Treaty if Washington expresses its readiness to achieve them, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

"We will continue working on getting the Americans to have a substantive discussion of these ideas, or to discuss some alternative solutions if the U.S. side manifests readiness to work on them," Ryabkov told a press conference in Moscow on Thursday.

Russia has conveyed to the U.S. its ideas on how to address the problem of the impossibility of checking the re-equipment of some U.S. strategic warheads for non-nuclear missions.

The proposed approaches "are not so far-reaching to necessitate a cardinal revision of the U.S. approach to the implementation of the treaty," he said. "Yes, these are serious measures, no, we cannot agree on them, and it remains a fact that the U.S. is avoiding a practical discussion of these measures, not offering anything instead," the deputy minister said.

The issue of the artificial exclusion of some U.S. strategic carriers from being counted has to be resolved before the expiration of the New START Treaty, whose prolongation is "an optimal option," he said.