Chinese, Russian militaries hold joint briefing on anti-missile issue

GENEVA, March 29 (ChinaMil) — The militaries of China and Russia held a joint briefing on global and regional anti-missile situations in Geneva on Tuesday morning on the sideline of the ongoing Conference on Disarmament.

Major General Zhang Jian, Chinese representative and director of the Operation Bureau under the Joint Staff Department under China’s Central Military Commission, said that the anti-missile issue had a profound and long-term impact on the global strategic balance and stability, peace and security, as well as arms control and disarmament process.

Development of the global anti-missile system that damages the strategic balance and stability will inevitably deteriorate the international security environment, Zhang stated.

The United Nations General Assembly has repeatedly passed resolutions on anti-missile issues, calling on the countries concerned to stop the anti-missile plan. Disregarding the common international environment and the legitimate interests of other countries, and unilaterally strengthening the global deployment of anti-missile systems will seriously hinder the process of nuclear disarmament, lead to confrontation and even arms race, undermine global and regional strategic stability, endanger outer space security, and threaten the space assets of various countries in the world, Zhang said.

The THAAD system deployed by the United States and South Korea far exceeds the defense needs of South Korea, and the United States’ true purpose, which obviously disagrees with its declared one, is to make the THAAD system a segment of the US global missile defense system and to strengthen its surveillance on the strategic depth of China and the Russian Far East region, seriously damaging the strategic interests of China and Russia, Zhang said.

He stated that the heads of state of China and Russia have issued a joint statement on strengthening global strategic stability, and the two sides will take further countermeasures to safeguard the security interests of the two countries and regional strategic balance.

Lieutenant General Viktor Poznihir, the representative of Russia and first deputy head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, said that the development of the global anti-missile situation is a major issue concerning international security, and has a profound impact on the process of nuclear disarmament and strategic stability.

The United States’ unilaterally withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty(ABM Treaty) and its establishment of the global anti-missile system have undermined the current international security system and broken the strategic balance, and could lead to an arms race that would generate unpredictable consequences, including lowering down the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, impairing the offense-defense force balance and even threatening space security, Poznihir said.

The United States took the missile threats from Iran and North Korea as an excuse for reinforcing its missile defense system deployment, but the actual capacity of the US missile defense system far exceeds its claimed defense needs, the system is, in fact, targeting Russia and China, Poznihir said.

Russia calls for an equal and constructive dialogue on the anti-missile issue in order to seek solutions which are able to take care of the interests of all parties concerned, he said.

Representatives from the participating countries in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva attended the joint briefing. This is the second briefing the Chinese and Russian militaries have jointly held on the anti-missile issue. In last October, the two sides held their first joint briefing on the anti-missile issue in Beijing on the sideline of the Seventh Xiangshan Forum.

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