Russian Defense Minister ready to speak on anti-missile defense with USA and NATO

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov is ready to speak on anti-missile defense with the USA and theater anti-missile defense with the NATO. This is what Sergei Ivanov told journalists in Honolulu where his plane landed for refueling while en route from Malaysia to the USA.

As Sergei Ivanov said, "we are ready to speak on the topic of anti-missile defense, given the observance of a number of conditions, which I mentioned on many occasions: the anti-defense systems of each party must not be aimed against each other, the entire intellectual property of each party must be preserved, space will not be militarized, and Russia and the USA must ensure full transparency in this field."

"All the other aspects of this issue do not concern us," he stressed. "It is not accidental that I speak about theater anti-missile defense, when the NATO is mentioned, and about anti-missile defense, when Russian-US accords are on the agenda," the minister said. "It is time to understand that these are different things."

"Neither the Russian nor the US party has made any considerable progress in this field so far," he said.

In his opinion, "it would not be serious to expect that the parties will be able to make any progress in this field in a year or two." "This will require decades and this is one of our priorities: we can discuss this issue only on a long-term basis," the defense minister said.

Sergei Ivanov warned against attempts by one of the parties to "wring what it needs from the other and then go off in opposite directions." "Figuratively speaking, pulling raisins from a bun does not suit us," Sergei Ivanov stressed.