Russia Never Agreed To US Demand To Include China In Arms Talks - Ryabkov

Russia Never Agreed to US Demand to Include China in Arms Talks - Ryabkov

Russia never agreed to the necessity of including China in negotiations on arms control and did not take any steps to attract Beijing to the talks in question, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said Monday to clarify the narrative pushed the US side

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st September, 2020) Russia never agreed to the necessity of including China in negotiations on arms control and did not take any steps to attract Beijing to the talks in question, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said Monday to clarify the narrative pushed the US side.

"It is no less strange that [special envoy of the US President Marshall] Billingslea in his comments presents as though Russia agreed with the US on the need to involve China in negotiations in this area. This is just a deliberate distortion of our position. We adhere to the approach that the sovereign choice of whether or not to join any negotiations, to any agreements, belongs to any country, including China," Ryabkov told reporters.

The diplomat said that Russia will nonetheless not object to any decision which Beijing takes. He underlined that Russia took no steps to influence a prospective decision in any way, the diplomat maintained.

"We did not and do not intend to take any steps to, so to speak, pull the People's Republic of China into these negotiations, which was repeatedly asserted to our American colleagues. Accordingly, their statement about our agreement with their approach is absolutely contrary to real facts," Ryabkov clarified.

He noted that this is not the only example of how the United States distorts what is happening.

The two sides have been engaged in preliminary negotiations on the future of the last strategic arms agreement left between the two nations, the New START agreement, which expires in February 2021. The US had previously torn up the key Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and maintains that China must be a party to any upcoming arms reductions or control treaty.