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Russian president signs new security strategy paper
May 13, 2009, 13:56 GMT
Moscow - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed Wednesday the Kremlin's new security strategy document which says the country still feels threatened, but also aims, together with the US, to reduce nuclear arsenals.
The paper comes with a delay of some months and to the background of a recent rapprochement in Moscow's relations with the new administration in Washington.
The paper says Russia continues to feel threatened by 'some leading foreign states' - without naming any by name - while also stressing the goal of reducing nuclear weapons alongside the US.
Among the threats to global security, the Russian policy paper cites the rivalry of countries over untapped energy resources, including in such places as the Caspian Sea and the Arctic region.
While avoiding the terminology typical of the Cold War days, the Moscow paper continues to see the US as a power opponent.
The Kremlin paper comes as the US and Russia prepare to hold disarmament negotiations at experts level starting May 18 in Moscow.
Nikolai Patruschev, chief of the national security council, told the Moscow daily Izvestia that he hoped for a 'complete and equal strategic partnership with the US on the basis of common interests.'
Patrushev said that the Kremlin's supreme policy aim remains making Russia into one of the world's five leading countries by the year 2015. Decisive elements of this is global influence, technological development and the population's standard of living.
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