Russia believes that the United States has not carried out secret deployment of missile launchers in violation of the Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START), Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told the State Duma (lower house) on Wednesday, TASS reports.
"We proceed from the assumption that there was no secret deployment of missile launchers in the US in violation of the treaty," he said.
"The number of inspections (18 a year), demonstrations, exchanges of information through notifications and other measures, which, I must stress, are taken strictly on the parity basis and imply no unilateral obligations for Russia allow for complementing well enough the picture we get with the help of national technical means of monitoring the opponents," Ryabkov said.
He recalled that under the treaty the two sides were to exchange telemetry concerning the maximum number of ballistic missile launches - up to five a year on each side.
"In fact, in recent years telemetry was exchanged concerning one launch on each side. I believe that a sufficient balance of transparency and secrecy was observed - if I am allowed to make such a comment when no military officials are present here."
