Russia proposes working on new CFE treaty - Ifax

MOSCOW, July 18 (Reuters) Russia today proposed working on a new pact on limiting military forces in Europe, a top defence ministry official was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.

President Vladimir Putin this month signed a decree suspending Russia's participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty.

The head of the defence ministry's international agreement department, Yevgeny Buzhinsky, said all sides should work on a new or adapted CFE treaty, Interfax reported.

Buzhinsky said a new pact should be worked out that better addressed the current situation.

''This can be done in two ways after the ratification by all parties, modify the adapted CFE or show political will and move to consultations and negotiations to work out a new agreement,'' he said, Interfax reported.

Buzhinsky also said the United States and Russia should work on concluding a ''simpler'' Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (known as START) to replace the current pact which expires in December 2009, RIA news agency reported.

Russia, he said, had proposed a new agreement to replace the START nuclear arms reduction treaty but that Moscow had received no response from Washington.

''We must not allow a vacuum... so we proposed the US think about what could come to replace START-1, something simpler, lighter,'' he said, Itar-Tass reported.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, later named START-1, was signed by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George Bush, the father of the current president, in July 1991.

He also proposed to interested countries the use of a radar base being built in Armavir, in southern Russia, to monitor Iran.

REUTERS SM MIR KP1442