MOSCOW, Nov 7: Russia’s parliament voted on Wednesday to suspend compliance with a key Cold War treaty limiting conventional forces in Europe as Moscow signalled it was weighing new force deployments on its western flank.

The lower house of parliament, the State Duma, voted unanimously to approve a Kremlin decision to suspend compliance with the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty from Dec 12.

The CFE treaty “no longer responds to the security interests of the Russian Federation” in light of Nato expansion and other factors that have altered the European security landscape, according to the motion approved by the Duma.

The vote amounted to confirmation of a decision announced by President Vladimir Putin last July, and officials said Russia was more interested in seeing Nato countries comply with the treaty than in scrapping it altogether.

The original pact, signed by the states of Nato and the Warsaw Pact, was modified in 1999 to take account of the break up of the Soviet Union and the evolving security allegiances on the continent.

Russia is the only party to have ratified the updated CFE pact. Nato members, led by the United States, have balked at ratifying the new deal until all Russian forces are out of ex-Soviet states Georgia and Moldova.

Shortly before the Duma vote, a senior Russian defence official said Russia was looking at options for bolstering conventional force deployments on its western flank with Europe in light of the CFE suspension.

“Work is being done on this issue,” Russia’s deputy defence minister, General Alexander Kolmakov, was quoted as saying by domestic news agencies, adding that no decision had yet been taken.

“The position of the defence ministry and Russia as a whole is being worked out now and when a decision is reached it will be announced.” Russia’s armed forces chief of staff, General Yury Baluyevsky, was quoted by Interfax news agency afterwards as saying that Russia was in no rush to deploy more forces in the west of the country but “must have the right” to do so.

Flank force deployment limits under the CFE “are of a discriminatory character and must be cancelled,” Baluyevsky said in an address to the Duma ahead of the vote.

He said NATO states still had more than a month to ratify the modified CFE treaty that they agreed to in Istanbul in 1999, since the Russian suspension would not take effect until Dec 12.

“They still have time,” he said.

Baluyevsky said that as a result of its enlargement to take in former states of the Soviet-run Warsaw Pact, Nato had already de facto largely exceeded the conventional force deployment limits spelled out by the CFE treaty.

Specifically, he said Nato had surpassed those limits by nearly 6,000 tanks, 10,822 armoured fighting vehicles, 5,000 artillery pieces, nearly 1,500 military aircraft and more than 500 strike helicopters.

“The destruction of the CFE treaty will be a massive, painful loss for the states of Europe,” Baluyevsky said.

He said Russia was ready “to do its part” to build security on the European continent, but would not do so “at the expense of its own security.” NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer last month urged Russia not to suspend compliance with the CFE treaty, saying the alliance viewed the pact as “one of the cornerstones, if not the cornerstone, of European security.” The Duma vote and reports that Moscow was reviewing its conventional force configuration in Europe were the latest in a series of assertive defence policy changes that have contributed to rising tensions between Russia and the West.

Putin and other top Russian officials this year have threatened to retarget nuclear missiles at European cities, renewed long-distance strategic bomber patrols and threatened to withdraw from other bedrock disarmament treaties.

Russia has been particularly upset by US plans to deploy elements of its new missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic, saying the plan in its current state would harm Russian security.

The United States has said the plan is designed to protect Europe from missiles launched by “rogue states” like Iran and has rejected the Russian complaints, though the two sides continue to discuss the issue.—AFP