Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Gog/Magog War

4. The Gog/Magog War

Russia suspends arms treaty

Russia's parliament has voted to suspend Moscow's support for a key treaty limiting the deployment of armed forces along its border with Europe. Parliament's lower house, the Duma, unanimously agreed to temporarily abandon the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe treaty (CFE). The bill still faces approval in the upper house in December before President Vladimir Putin can sign it. The CFE is one of many issues recently putting Moscow at odds with the West. In the motion, MPs said the CFE treaty "no longer responds to the security interests of the Russian Federation" in light of Nato expansion and other factors in Europe. The CFE was one of the most significant arms control agreements of the Cold War years. It set strict limits on the number of conventional weapons - battle tanks, combat aircraft, heavy artillery - that the members of the Warsaw Pact and Nato could deploy in European territory stretching from the Atlantic coast to the Urals.

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