Russian General Staff: USA Will Never Ratify Start-2

First Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff, Colonel-General Yuri Baluyevsky announced on Friday that the General Staff did not believe that the USA would ever ratify START-2. He told journalists that Russia had never made concessions to the US and would not do so on the missile shield and START issues. "There are no concessions and cannot be on principle," Baluyevsky stressed. He also expressed his support for the continuation of consultations with the USA on issues of strategic stability. The general said that dialogue with the Americans would go on, and that he proposed to his negotiating partner, US Under Secretary of State for Defense Douglas Feith, that it be continued between the two countries in December this year and the first half of 2002.