EU FOR PRESERVING RUSSIAN-US ABM TREATY








WASHINGTON, MARCH 7, 2001 /FROM RIA NOVOSTI CORRESPONDENT ARKADY ORLOV/ -- The stand of the European Union and its leadership has remained unchanged - the EU, as before, considers the Russian-US treaty on anti-ballistic missile defence (ABM) to be a "strategic document" and holds the view that nothing must threaten it. As the RIA Novosti correspondent reports, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden - the representative of the country which is the chairman of the EU - Anna Lindh stated this in Washington.


	The head of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs is visiting the American capital and met with journalists right after her talks with US Secretary of State Colin Powell.


	According to Lindh, at the meeting with Powell she did not raise the question relating to the claims by some mass media about alleged deployment of tactical nuclear weapons near Russian Kaliningrad. Lindh said that she had already discussed this question with Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Igor Ivanov and that she deems it necessary to continue "discussing in general the problem of tactical nuclear warheads".


	It is also important to include the question of tactical nuclear weapons in "the future international talks and the talks on the START-3 Treaty", the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden stated and also said that she intended to touch upon this problem at her forthcoming Friday meeting with Igor Ivanov in Stockholm.