NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer urged Russia on Thursday not to abandon an important Soviet-era treaty limiting troops and military hardware in Europe, an alliance official said. Closing a meeting with Russia's NATO ambassador in Brussels, Scheffer "asked that political consultations continue and that all parties refrain from unilateral and definitive actions," the official said.
The official said the 26 NATO ambassadors at the talks "firmly and unanimously rejected signals from Russia that would call into question a treaty they consider to be very important".
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week declared a freeze on observance of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, and threatened to pull out of it all together.
In Moscow, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying: "We declared a moratorium and we will not inform anyone about movement of troops across our own territory."
He said the moratorium would last until all NATO countries ratify a revised version of the treaty, which limits deployments of tanks and troops in countries belonging to NATO and the former Warsaw Pact in eastern Europe.
The allies, who called last week for Russia to clarify its stance, insist it must first withdraw all troops from the former Soviet republics of Moldova and Georgia.
The NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Russian ambassador Konstantin Totsky "did not provide much more detail to explain what Putin meant when he referred to a moratorium".
But he said the ambassador "made it very clear that there was no link in Russia's mind between the CFE and missile defence", a reference to US plans, which have angered Moscow, to extend its missile shield into Europe.
Source: Agence France-Presse
