Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday hailed the White House statement on the US readiness to slash its strategic offensive weapons.
Russia sees "positive signals" from the United States on the issue of strategic arms, such as Washington's readiness to reduce offensive strategic armaments to 1,700-2,200 warheads, Putin told the German and Russian press here ahead of his trip to Germany due on April 9-10.
The two countries "are actively working" on the US president' s visit to Russia in May and possible signing of a new document on strategic stability, he said.
"It will be a very important document that may lay the foundation of the future strategic stability in the world." If the document is signed, the Moscow visit of George W. Bush "will be really historic," Putin said.
He declared positive changes in the drafting of documents on disarmament and control over nuclear armaments. "We are arriving at certain compromises at the negotiations ... I hope the agreements will be legalized by the visit of President Bush to Russia," he said.
Meanwhile, Russia is concerned about pronouncements by some US non-top officials on the need to resume nuclear tests and design small nuclear devices, Putin said.
Russia still regards as "an erroneous move" the US abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, although "the American partners acted correctly from the legal point of view," the president said.
"Yet we hear certain pronouncements about possible use of nuclear armaments on the part of the United States, in particular, against non-nuclear nations, and proposals to design small nuclear devices for their possible use in regional conflicts," Putin said.
Such pronouncements "lower the threshold of possible use of such armaments to a dangerous limit, and as a result the very attitude to the problem may change," he warned.
If that happens, "one may speak about changes in the strategy in which nuclear armaments will stop being a weapon of deterrence and turn into a weapon of operation. That is very dangerous," Putin stressed.
On Russia-West ties, Putin said that the rapprochement with the West is beneficial for Russia. He said that he cooperates with the West "not because he wants to be liked or get something in exchange" but because these relations "fully comply with the national interests of Russia."
He thinks that comparison of his activities with the activities of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is irrelevant.
"The overwhelming majority of our citizens realize that the ( current foreign) policy complies with the national interests of our country," Putin said.
He said his main tasks are to achieve economic growth and to improve the people's life. "That cannot be done without creating a favorable foreign political atmosphere around Russia," he emphasized.
Putin said that most of Russian politicians, servicemen and high-ranking specialists support his policy. "Rapprochement with the West is not the policy of Putin, it is the policy of Russia,? he stressed.
(Xinhua News Agency April 8, 2002)
