Russia said today it regretted a decision by US President George W Bush to freeze a major bilateral civilian nuclear pact but said Moscow wanted nuclear cooperation with the United States to continue.
The United States announced yesterday that it would withdraw the agreement, potentially worth billions of dollars in trade, from Congress. The move was widely seen as a penalty on Moscow for its actions in Georgia.
The nuclear agreement, signed in May by US and Russian officials, would have allowed the world's two biggest atomic powers to boost their nuclear trade and work on new ways to prevent proliferation.
The deal would have opened the booming US market and Russia's vast uranium fields to companies from both countries by removing Cold War restrictions that prevent bilateral trade potentially worth billions of dollars.
The deal would have opened the booming US market and Russia's vast uranium fields to companies from both countries by removing Cold War restrictions that prevent bilateral trade potentially worth billions of dollars.
But officials in both Washington and Moscow said the step could ultimately save the agreement, possibly for a future US administration, by preventing Congress from sinking the deal.
"We see the decision of US President G. Bush ... to pull the agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear energy as mistaken and politicised," Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement.
"The step by the US administration is worthy of regret," the ministry said, adding that Russia viewed the decision as a breach of agreements made between Bush and former President Vladimir Putin in April.
But Russia's powerful first deputy prime minister, Igor Shuvalov, told reporters that Moscow still wanted cooperation to continue in the nuclear sector.
"We consider that the joint development of relations between the Russian Federation and the United States in the sphere of the peaceful use of nuclear energy is very important," Shuvalov told reporters in the Siberian city of Irkutsk.
"Whatever the decisions at the current time, we consider that it is a promising area for mutual cooperation and Russia and America will definitely cooperate, if not now than in the future," Shuvalov said.
Meanwhile, US Vice President Dick Cheney renewed his calls to respect Georgia's territorial integrity today, after Moscow established official diplomatic relations with the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
"The international community is united in deploring Russia's military action and codemning its unilateral efforts to alter by force of arms ... internationally recognised boundaries," he said at a news conference in Rome.
"The international community supports the independence and territorial integrity of Georgia and calls for the peaceful resolution of this dispute."
Moscow officially recognised South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states after Russian troops fought a brief war last month with Georgia. Nicaragua has been the only other country to recognise their independence from Georgia.
Reuters
