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U.S. Senate Urges Putin to Reconsider CFE Moratorium
U.S. Senate has passed resolution calling on Russia to reconsider its decision to suspend the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, The Associated Press reported.
”A Russia that seeks to build a permanent partnership with the West cannot act this in this manner,” said Senator Bob Casey, who introduced the bipartisan resolution in the Senate.
On July 14, President Vladimir Putin inked the bill suspending the CFE Treaty and related international agreements. Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, got the bill on July 23.
Member states of NATO and the Warsaw Treaty signed the CFE Treaty in Paris November 19, 1990 and the document took effect November 1992. It established comprehensive limits for five key categories of conversional weapons and machinery, including tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, combat planes and helicopters, and covered the land starting from the Atlantic Ocean to the Urals. The member states were 28 countries of Europe as well as the United States and Canada.
But it’s a different world now and the member states sealed in Istanbul November 19, 1999 an Adaptation Agreement to CFE Treaty, which reflects changes in military and political environment in Europe and spells out transfer from the block structure of the treaty to the national and territorial limits for a member state. Indeed, the Warsaw Treaty perished quite a few years ago and there is no such state as the Soviet Union on the world map now.
But only Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan have ratified that agreement as of today.
www.kommersant.com
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