A top Russian general said on Tuesday that Moscow planned to hold an exercise in April aimed at reassuring its Nato partners that its nuclear arsenals were in safe hands.
"In April 2004 we will hold an exercise in the North to show the safety of stored nuclear arms," first deputy chief of the General Staff Colonel-General Yuri Baluyevsky said. "We will invite our Nato colleagues to attend," he told a news conference.
Russia has consistently denied Western suggestions that the instability of the early post-Soviet years had made its huge nuclear arsenals inherited from the Soviet Union easy prey for unstable states or terrorist networks.