The permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, are the same five states which the UN Charter of 1945 grants a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. These countries were all allies in World War II, which they won. They are also all nuclear weapons states.
At the meeting, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said warned that the level of potential conflict in the world has reached a dangerous tipping point.
“The situation in the sphere of international security has not stabilized and even continued to deteriorate. The level of conflict potential has reached a very dangerous point,” according to Ryabkov.
He said Russia was witnessing a decline in strategic stability in the world because non-proliferation regimes and arms control are being challenged by some. The meeting of five nuclear powers is held in Beijing on 30-31 January.
“Some countries are making dangerous changes to their doctrines, including those leading to lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons”, the deputy foreign minister explained.
“It cannot but cause concern that all these events are taking place against the background of a deepening deficit of mutual trust between the members of the ‘nuclear five,’ which is an unprecedented challenge for this format. The situation is so serious that this time we even had to refuse to adopt the final statement,” Ryabkov noted at the meeting in Beijing.
“That is why the issue submitted by Russia regarding the role and the place of the ‘nuclear five’ both in the context of strengthening the NPT and in a broader perspective, becomes particularly relevant,” Ryabkov added.
The Russian delegation is eager to discuss the issue of Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with US State Department’s Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Andrea Thompson in Beijing. The agreement means that all cruise or ground-launched ballistic missiles with ranges between 500 and 5 500 kilometers, should be destroyed.
Moscow is particularly keen on maintaining the dialogue on the issue with the United States, he said, even though the United States has repeatedly accused Moscow of INF treaty violations.
In particular, US officials are worried about Russia’s 9M729 missile, which, according to Washington, violates the nuclear treaty. Washington has threatened to withdraw from the treaty unless Russia complies with their demands.
But Russia has refuted allegations of being in breach of the agreement and said that launchers on US defense systems in Europe were capable of firing cruise missiles at ranges expressly banned by the INF accord.
The Russian permanent mission to NATO said last week that the potential collapse of the INF Treaty also posed risks to the European security, and added that it was therefore crucial to preserve the bilateral agreement with the US even after the announced suspension of American participation on 2 February.
Military attaches from the United States and NATO have ignored the recent briefing on the disputed 9M729 missile organised by the Russian Defense Ministry.
Russia publicly displayed the launch canisters for the 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile and its associated transporter erector launcher, or TEL, and offered new details about the complete system at its Patriot Park theme park outside of Moscow on January 23.
The INF Treaty was signed in 1987 by then leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and then US President Ronald Reagan.
