RUSSIAN NUCLEAR EXPERTS FORESEE NEW COLD WAR.

RUSSIAN NUCLEAR EXPERTS FORESEE NEW COLD WAR.

Specialists from Russia’s nuclear weapons establishment warned yesterday that Moscow might resort to harsh measures to counter NATO’s eastward expansion. Igor Andryushin and Aleksandr Chernyshev of the Arzamas-16 nuclear research center said that an expanded NATO "would considerably surpass Russia in its military-technical potential" and that the stationing of tactical nuclear weapons in Eastern Europe would compel Russia to deploy "nuclear air defense and sea defense systems on its western border." In order to update its nuclear arsenal to meet this new threat, they said, Moscow would also have to scrap the 1988 INF Treaty and would refuse to sign the comprehensive test ban treaty. A new cycle of nuclear tests aimed at developing a new generation of weapons would follow. (Itar-Tass, March 26)

Izvestiya