MOSCOW, July 6 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's foreign minister said Thursday that the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe may cease to exist if the West continues to evade ratification of its adapted version.
"In the absence of any shifts in the standpoint of primarily NATO countries who are opposed to the Adapted CFE, the treaty may die of natural causes," Sergei Lavrov said at a panel discussion in Russia's parliament.
The CFE, signed in 1990, is a major European arms control agreement. Its adapted version was signed in 1999, but only three of the signatory states have ratified it so far.
"Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus have ratified it [the adapted treaty], but the West refuses to do so under the pretext of ongoing Russian military presence in Transdnestr and Georgia," Lavrov said.
He said "the Georgia pretext" was no longer valid as the sides had already agreed on the withdrawal of military bases from Georgian territory.
Lavrov said there were only 500 Russian servicemen currently deployed in Moldova's breakaway Transdnestr region and that they were guarding Europe's largest arms depot. "It would be a crime to leave it unattended," he said.
The minister said the adapted CFE was of particular importance for Russia's security and that its failure to come into force would "lead to a situation where we will have to think of some alternative methods to provide our security."
Last month, Russia's envoy to the world's largest regional security organization also dismissed statements by some Western nations that they could ratify the adapted CFE only after Moscow fulfilled the troop withdrawal commitments it had taken at an OSCE summit in Istanbul in 1999.
He said Russia had already pulled out most of its troops from former Soviet republics, including Moldova and Georgia, and that the CFE Treaty put no timeframe on the withdrawal anyway.
