Former Russian Foreign Minister: U.S. and Russia Should Cooperate on Nuclear Disarmament

Calling the current state of the U.S.-Russia relationship “one of the worst in bilateral history, not only since the Cold War,” former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the two nations should restore dialogue on the mutual disarmament of nuclear weapons. At a Monday presentation in Washington focusing on the U.S.-Russia relationship, moderator and former CNN foreign correspondent Jill Dougherty alluded to the “up-for-discussion” Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, an agreement that the U.S. State Department accused Russia of violating. “If we really want stability and if we really want to guarantee nuclear nonproliferation regimes in the world, we need to have dialogue among us,” Ivanov said. “If we don’t have dialogue, we have less possibility to ask other countries not to develop their nuclear projects. Even during the Cold War, our negotiations on strategic weapons were one of the bases of our relations, defining the long-term interests, and now I don’t see any reason why we don’t speak about this issue.”

Ivanov said that the U.S. and Russia face a range of global threats, and should create a productive “mechanism of cooperation” based upon that common ground. “To have this, we need political will and political decision,” Ivanov said.