MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Leontyev stressed that France, the United Kingdom and China joining nuclear disarmament "was a prerequisite for further progress in this direction."
France and the United Kingdom have "fairly serious nuclear potential, which, from their own statements, is able to inflict a great damage to any potential enemy which they do not directly name," Leontyev said, noting that Russia has "no possibility to check and confirm that the French or the UK nuclear capacity is exactly as they claim," and that, thus, "the challenge is to find ways to make this process [reduction of nuclear arsenal] multilateral in its nature by including all the states possessing nuclear capabilities.
On July 29, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Director of the Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control Mikhail Ulyanov said that strategic arms reduction treaty negotiations should include all nuclear powers.
