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Russia urges NATO to agree on de-escalation measures, lower military activity — diplomat

Cooperation and dialogue will be complicated until NATO drops its policy toward containing Russia, Deputy Permanent Representative at the UN office in Geneva Andrei Belousov said

UNITED NATIONS, October 18. /TASS/. Russia proposes that Moscow and NATO agree on de-escalation measures, including the mutual reduction of military activity, Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative at the UN office in Geneva Andrei Belousov said at the UN General Assembly First Committee on Monday.

"One of the major factors helping to maintain and enhance security at the regional and sub-regional levels is reaching agreements on abandoning destabilizing military activities, arms control and disarmament," he said. "Global tendencies toward degrading security tell on the situation in Europe. Key arms control agreements and trust-building instruments are being wrecked, military potentials are being built up and NATO activities near the Russian border are being increased."

"Obviously, cooperation and dialogue will be complicated until NATO drops its policy toward containing Russia," the Russian diplomat said, adding that steps toward improving the situation and the focus on bona fide implementation of the existing agreements, including the Vienna Document on trust-building measures, are badly needed.

"We propose agreeing on de-escalation measures, including mutual reduction of military activity along the border of Russia and NATO countries and on improving the mechanisms of preventing incidents and dangerous military activity," Belousov said.

According to the Russian diplomat, a structured dialogue on challenges in the OSCE region is an important measure of trust geared to ease military tensions, which will help "create conditions for discussing key problems of European security and arms control."

"Russia is ready for constructive work in the above mentioned areas. We stand firmly for settling regional security problems by political and diplomatic means, including by reaching agreements on arms control and disarmament," he stressed.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier on Monday that Russia is suspending its permanent mission to NATO from November 1 in response to NATO’s decision to revoke the accreditation of eight staffers of the Russian mission. Apart from that, Russia is suspending the NATO Information Office in Moscow and the NATO Military Liaison Mission Moscow starting on November 1 because Russia sees "no reason to continue to pretend that any changes [in relations with NATO] are possible in the foreseeable future," Lavrov said.

On October 6, NATO announced the reduction of the Russian mission from 20 to 10 people and revoked the accreditation of eight diplomats. Two more open vacancies were eliminated. The Alliance said the Russian diplomats are to leave Brussels before the end of this month.