Russia denies nuke movement report

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, JAN. 4.Russia has dismissed as a provocation a U.S. newspaper report that it was redeploying short-range nuclear weapons on its western borders.

The RIA-Novosti news agency on Thursday quoted a senior General Staff official as saying the report absolutely did not correspondent with reality and was a provocation.

The alleged movement of the nuclear weapons, first reported in Wednesday's Washington Times, was later confirmed by an anonymous U.S. State Department official.

Citing intelligence sources, the paper said that Russia had been moving nuclear weapons since last summer to a missile base in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea squeezed between Poland and Lithuania.

The Russians said they had removed all tactical nukes from Eastern Europe in the wake of 1991 and 1992 non-binding agreements with the U.S. to reduce arsenals of tactical nuclear weapons. However, two years ago Moscow warned NATO that the alliance's further expansion into Eastern Europe and the Baltic could undermine all arms accords and provoke a redeployment of Russian nuclear weapons on Western borders. The paper alleged the movement of battlefield nukes could be Moscow's reaction to the admission of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to NATO in 1999. However, a military spokesman denied the suggestion.

Russia has enough other ways to respond to the NATO further expansion to the East and reliably protect its national security, the General Staff official told RIA-Novosti. Analysts said the U.S. report on the weapons movement could foreshadow a harder line the new Republican administration in the White House is expected to take on Russia.

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Section  : International
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