Moscow says too soon to scrap nuclear weapons

MOSCOW, November 2 (RIA Novosti) - Russia has no plans to completely abandon nuclear weapons, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday.

"If there were only five nuclear powers in the world and they abandoned their nuclear weapons, after which only conventional weapons - muskets, cannons, and pistols - would remain, we would have disarmed ourselves a long time ago," Sergei Lavrov told a news conference after a meeting with his British counterpart David Miliband in Moscow.

He added that there were unofficial nuclear powers, and that it was not ruled out that nuclear technology, which "is virtually available via the Internet," would spread.

He stressed the importance of nonproliferation efforts and said that nuclear disarmament "means many things, including practical agreements that will prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons technology anywhere in the world."