Russia’s Lavrov Says Relations With USA Improving, Missile Defence Main Obstacle

Missile Defense Control Room file photo

(RIA Novosti –  Moscow, 22 October) Relations with the USA have acquired very positive dynamics over the recent years, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced on Monday (22 October).

In an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper he noted that “a multi-aspect vector of development has emerged – this is the presidential commission which comprises 21 groups”.

Lavrov added that one was observing “a transition to a qualitatively new level”. As an example of work that has been done between the two countries, Lavrov citied the signing of the SORT (Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty).

When responding to a request from journalists to comment in the context of the current US presidential race the statement according to which Russia is supposedly viewed as an enemy, Lavrov noted that for Moscow “USA is not a foreign political enemy”. “We do not have foreign political enemies at all… we are not planning to create enemies of some sort for ourselves,” the minister added in this context.

He also noted that “some politicians in the USA follow the line of striving to strengthen their domestic political positions (by creating the image of an enemy) and strive to attract voters to militant rhetoric of this kind.

(Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying that Russia would work with the new US administration irrespective who wins the presidential election. The agency also quoted him as saying: “There are many examples in the history where pre-election rhetoric went off the scale but only when the winner at the elections comes to their workplace and has to deal with concrete matters, one can judge the real intentions of any particular administration. I am convinced that no matter what happens, whoever wins, US relations with the outside world will not go away and attitude towards Russia in this context, I think, will play not at all the last role for any American administration.”

RIA Novosti quoted Lavrov as saying that the problem of missile defence was the main obstacle on the path to building relations of strategic partnership between Russia and the USA.

“The problem of missile defence is – I would not call it a bone of contention – but the main obstacle on the path of developing relations of strategic partnership between Russia and the USA, Russia and NATO,” RIA Novosti quoted Lavrov as saying in interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

Lavrov said that Moscow saw no prospect of the sides moving closer towards each other’s positions on the issue of missile defence in the near future. “The key (to resolving the problem of European missile defence) is in our dialogue with the USA, where, I repeat, we see no movement forward,” he said.

“One would not like for the situation to freeze as it is without some movement towards each other,” Lavrov added. He recalled that Moscow continues dialogue on missile defence not with the USA but with NATO although “everyone knows that the NATO missile defence is the US missile defence, which will be controlled from the USA and no-one apart from the USA will not be admitted to its real command”.)

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