Russia pulls out of key European arms treaty

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia will no longer respect a key arms treaty that limits the deployment of military forces in Europe, the Kremlin said in the latest escalation of tensions between Moscow and the West.

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree suspending Russia's adherence to the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) arms control treaty due to "exceptional circumstances ... broaching on the security of the Russian Federation," the Kremlin said in a statement.

A spokesman for NATO, Russia's partner in the treaty, called the move "a step backward." A White House spokesman described it as "disappointing."

While the moratorium will likely have little practical impact on troop deployments, analysts said it was the latest assertive move from a Kremlin that wants to rewrite the rules of transatlantic relations to take account of Russia's newfound strength.

"It wants to revise the rules of the game in the Euro-Atlantic area written when Russia was weak," said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the Moscow-based journal Russia in Global Affairs.

"Europe will be extremely uneasy over this and Russia is hoping that this nervousness will lead to a softening of its position."

Relations between Russia and the West have taken a plunge in recent months with disagreements over the deployment of elements of a US missile shield in central Europe and the fate of the
breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo.

Analysts have suggested that upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections have put pressure on the Kremlin to flex its diplomatic muscle.

Putin's decree, signed Friday, ordered the foreign ministry to immediately inform the other signatories of Russia's decision, triggering the automatic suspension of Russia's participation 150 days later.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, on a visit to Nida, in Lithuania, expressed his "great concern."

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement that Washington would continue to discuss the treaty with Moscow.

The CFE, 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 countries belonging to NATO and the former Warsaw Pact in eastern Europe and lays down measures aimed at confidence-building, transparency and cooperation between member states.

While both sides are violating the rules on troop deployments already, ending mutual confidence-building measures and inspections could add to Russian-EU tensions, said independent defence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer.

Russia has threatened several times to pull out of the treaty amid unease over US military encroachment into territory once part of the former Soviet Union, including plans to develop a US missile defence shield in Europe.

In recent months Moscow suggested it would target missiles at Europe if the United States went ahead with the proposal.

Despite the tensions, the foreign ministry said in a statement Saturday that the decision to freeze the CFE was "difficult" and was only taken after repeated appeals to Russia's western partners about the "outdated" treaty.

"So far we have not seen any constructive response to our legitimate concerns," the statement said, adding, however, that it "does not mean that we have closed the door on dialogue."

Three months ago, Putin threatened to pull Russia out of the CFE until all of NATO's current members ratified a new version of the treaty agreed in 1999.

The CFE, originally signed in 1990 by the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the former Warsaw Pact, was adapted to take into account the collapse of the Warsaw pact.

NATO states have refused to ratify the new pact on the grounds that Moscow has failed to honour commitments made in 1999 to withdraw Russian forces from the ex-Soviet republics of Georgia and Moldova.

Putin's insistence that all countries ratify the CFE appeared particularly aimed at the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were once part of the Soviet Union and are not part of the treaty.

The three are all now members of NATO.