UPDATE 2-Russia calls for conference on CFE arms treaty

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By Oleg Shchedrov

Russia on Monday requested an emergency conference to discuss an arms control pact after accusing NATO nations of ignoring the deal negotiated in the months after the Cold War ended.

Last month, President Vladimir Putin froze Moscow's commitments under the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty and said Russia could totally quit it altogether if Russia-NATO council failed to find a solution suitable to Moscow.

"Russia, on May 28, approached the Netherlands, the depositary of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, with a request to call an emergency conference on June 12-15 in Vienna," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The statement did not specify what Russia was planning to propose at the Vienna conference, but its move could further strain relations with the United States already soured by a row over U.S. plans to build a missile shield in eastern Europe.

Moscow opposes the scheme to base 10 missile interceptors in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic from 2012 to head off what Washington sees as a threat from Iran and North Korea.

U.S. President George W. Bush will meet Putin at the G8 summit of world leaders in Germany on June 6-8 and is due to visit the Czech Republic and Poland while he is in Europe.

Putin cited the U.S. plan as the last straw which pushed him to freeze Moscow's CFE commitments, however, Russia's chief of general staff General Yuri Baluyevsky said later it was not directly linked.

BATTLE TANKS

The CFE pact, originally signed in 1990 and updated in 1999, limits the number of battle tanks, heavy artillery, combat aircraft and attack helicopters deployed and stored between the Atlantic and Russia's Ural mountains.

But after the Soviet Union collapsed and most of its Warsaw Pact allies became NATO members, the CFE treaty -- still described by officials as a cornerstone of security in Europe -- became a largely symbolic document.

The Western partners refuse to ratify the CFE until Russia pulls out its bases from Georgia and Moldova, as it had promised when the treaty was reviewed in Istanbul in 1999.

Russia, which is already in the process of pulling out from Georgia, says the issue of bases is not part of the CFE and accuses the West of artificially linking the two issues.

Moscow argues, unhappy about NATO's expansion eastwards, says U.S. plans to open bases for several thousand soldiers in Romania and Bulgaria this year are in breach of the CFE.

NATO officials insist the U.S. bases are not intended as permanent installations and so cannot be seen as a breach.

"Russia considers that the exceptional circumstances which serve as grounds for calling the conference include the serious problems that have arisen in implementing the treaty by NATO countries as a result of the expansion of the alliance," the Russian Foreign Ministry statement said.

Russian officials have expressed unhappiness with parts of the treaty which require it to notify other signatories when it carries out redeployments of its forces inside its own borders.

Some analysts say Russia's departure from the CFE could become a mirror step to match Washington's 2001 decision to quit the Cold War Anti-Ballistic Missile pact with Moscow, which the United States said prevented it from building a new missile defence system.

[MOSCOW/Reuters/Finance.cz]