Kathmandu: The Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Mr. Igor IVANOV has said that his country “favors the creation of nuclear-weapon free zones in different regions of the world and non-deployment of nuclear weapons beyond national territories as a substantial contribution to strengthening strategic stability”.

Forein Minister Ivanov made these remarks February 1 at the plenary meeting of the Conference on Disarmament held in Geneva, Switzerland.

“‘The era of globalization is bursting into our life making us change its traditional ways and confronting us with increasingly complicated tasks”, said Minister Ivanov adding that the “international community will only be able to resolve them if it acts jointly and rationally, using the achievements of contemporary science and technology and the aggregate economic and intellectual potential for the benefit of all states of the globe.

In the opinion of the Russian Federation, not a single state, even the most powerful one in economic and military terms can find responses to new challenges that would really threaten international security in the 21 century and that all attempts to create isolated islets of well-being and stability in today’s world are illusory and in our view were doomed to failure.

During the lecture in Geneva, the RF minister disclosed that his country was ready to “start immediately negotiations with the United States on the development of a START-III Treaty. The Russian side also proposed that deeper drastic reductions of strategic warheads should be undertaken in the new Treaty than agreed before that is down to 1,500 units instead of 2,000-2,500.

The Russian minister however, raised the issue of world concern related to the possibility of an arms race in the outer space. In this regard the minister said that “that was why we like the overwhelming majority of other states supported during the last session of the General Assembly of the UN the earliest start of substantive negotiations on outer space topic at our forum in Geneva”.

At the conclusion of his speech, the Russian Foreign minister praised the role of the Conference on Disarmament by saying that “he would like to stress once more that his nation highly appreciated the role played by the Conference on Disarmament in building new stable and safe world order and would persistently strive to enhance its international authority and effectiveness.”