Russia suspends CFE treaty until ratified by partners : Ivanov

Moscow, May 3 (UNI) Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov today declared Russia will stick to its moratorium on the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) until it is ratified by other signatories.

''We have introduced a moratorium and will no longer inform anyone about troop movements on our own territory. We will stick to our moratorium until our partners ratify this treaty,'' Interfax news agency quoted Ivanov as saying in the Russian city of Bryansk, during a visit to a chemical weapons site.

He was commenting on President Vladimir Putin's warning in his state-of-the-nation address to the joint session of Parliament on April 26 that Russia would unilaterally suspend its implementation of the CFE Treaty.

Ivanov said while the Treaty was signed in 1990 to control the conventional forces of two opposing military blocs from the Atlantic to the Urals, ''the Warsaw Pact is already history, and our partners still seem bloc-minded.'' Answering a question about the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) signed in 1993 by 180 states to destroy all chemical weapons, implemented in Russia with the aid of foreign countries, Ivanov said that Russia had ratified it and would honour all its provisions.

''We need (the convention) because the stockpiling of 50-year-old munitions is unsafe,'' he said.

Russia recently fulfilled its provisional obligations under the CWC, destroying 20 per cent (about 8,000 tons) of its chemical stockpiles and progressing steadily towards full destruction by May 1, 2012, in line with the Convention, Ivanov said.

UNI