Russia's upper house approved on Friday the president-proposed moratorium on the arms reduction pact as the country's response to U.S. missile shield plans and NATO expansion. The unilateral moratorium, earlier approved by the State Duma, parliament's lower house, will come into force at midnight on December 12.
Sergei Lavrov said: "We expect our partners' response [to the CFE moratorium] will help improve the arms control regime in Europe. This can be done by ratifying the adapted CFE Treaty and updating the regime, which in its current form is absolutely senseless."
Lavrov also said NATO's position, linking ratification of the revamped version of the CFE Treaty with the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia and Moldova, was highly politicized and "an attempt to conceal reluctance" to ratify the treaty.
The modified version of the arms control treaty, which Western countries consider a cornerstone of European security, was signed on November 19, 1999 by all NATO countries except Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Slovenia.
The original CFE treaty was signed in December 1990 by 16 NATO states and six Warsaw Pact members. The document set equal limits for the sides on five categories of conventional weapons - battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery pieces, combat aircraft and attack helicopters.
Moscow considers the original CFE Treaty to be outdated since it does not reflect the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the breakup of the Soviet Union, or recent NATO expansion.
