Leonid Slutskiy: We have no right to lose a nonproliferation regime
An unprecedentedly high level of American experts, leaders of the largest US research centers participated in the Russian-American conference on arms control
”We talked
about the need to maintain the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
(INF) Treaty. If we fail to do this, we will not prolongate the New
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty on 5 February 2021, and, in fact,
the entire regime for the non-proliferation of nuclear
weapons will, unfortunately, disappear in history,“ Chairman
of the International Affairs Committee Leonid Slutskiy
Leonid Eduardovich
said.
Both Russia and the United States should be equally interested in the preservation of the INF treaty in the interests of a peaceful, stable and equitable architecture of security in the 21st century, Leonid Slutskiy believes.
At the same time, he stressed that the Russian-American parliamentary cooperation began to intensify. ”We did not expect a special constructive dialog, especially positive assessments in the first weeks and months, but [the meeting of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in] Helsinki, I hope, will give an impetus to positive feedback, a bilateral inter-parliamentary dialogue, and, of course, today's disarmament conference will also help,“ Leonid Slutskiy said.
”We hope and believe that today's conference will be the starting point for a new round of constructive cooperation in the field of disarmament,“ the parliamentarian added.
”We have no right to procrastinate. We have no right to lose the INF Treaty, New START and the entire nonproliferation regime, which has been successfully operating for almost half a century,“ Leonid Slutskiy concluded.
The Russian-American arms control conference was organized for the first time by the State Duma together with the United States and Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
