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US intensifying rocket defence plans: Moscow
Apr 22, 2009, 15:52 GMT
Moscow - Russia is disappointed over US President Barack Obama's lack of readiness to compromise in the dispute over the anti- ballistic missile system planned for Central Europe, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov was quoted by local media as saying Wednesday.
'The US has not revised its plans (after the change of president) but instead intensified them,' Ryabkov said in an interview with the newspaper Vremya Novostey.
Ryabkov said the Russian delegation will again propose a common defence system to their US counterparts at the disarmament talks in Rome on Friday. He ruled out participating in the US project planned for Poland and the Czech Republic.
The deputy foreign minister said that cooperation must be on a much more equal footing. 'We won't jump on an American train and head off in an unknown direction.'
He added that the US is apparently not ready to scrap a 'significant number' of nuclear warheads at the moment.
Ryabkov said Russia needs guarantees that the US would destroy the dismantled warheads and not merely store them for possible reactivation.
'The new US administration is listening to us better than the administration of George W Bush. But we are just in the initial stages of contacts.'
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