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WASHINGTON: The United States denied on Monday any cause and effect between Russia’s suspension of a treaty limiting conventional forces in Europe and US plans for an anti-missile
shield in Europe.
“I am not sure I get the linkage between the CFE and missile defence,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
“I would put to you that the Russian issue, shall we say, with the CFE treaty extends well back before anybody ever thought about missile defence in Europe,” he said, alluding to a 1999
Istanbul summit.
The Kremlin announced on Saturday that President Vladimir Putin had decreed suspension of Russia’s application of the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty.
The CFE treaty, which came into force in 1992, is one of the key post-Cold War security accords in Europe.
It limits deployments of tanks and troops in Nato and in former Warsaw Pact countries and lays down measures aimed at confidence-building, transparency and cooperation between member states.
Russia had threatened several times to pull out of the treaty amid unease over US military encroachment into territory once part of the former Soviet bloc.
Moscow particularly objected to US plans to place elements of a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Moscow reproached Nato countries that have not ratified the 1999 revision of the CFE treaty agreed in Istanbul to account for dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, which unified the defence of the
Soviet Union with socialist countries in Eastern Europe, including Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary.
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