NATO hopes the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) will be revived in the near future, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday.
Russia imposed a unilateral moratorium on the CFE treaty in December 2007, citing concerns over NATO's eastward expansion, U.S. missile defense plans for Europe, and the alleged refusal of the alliance's new members to ratify the adapted treaty.
Russia has repeatedly said it will resume its participation in the CFE if NATO countries ratify the adapted treaty, signed on November 19, 1999 and so far ratified only by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Moscow considers the original CFE treaty, signed in December 1990 by 16 NATO countries and six Warsaw Pact members, to be discriminatory and outdated since it does not reflect the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc, the breakup of the Soviet Union, or NATO eastward expansion.
BRUSSELS, November 15 (RIA Novosti)
