Russia must withdraw its troops and forces from the former Soviet state of Moldova to ratify a treaty limiting conventional forces in Europe, a senior US diplomat said on Friday.
Stephen Rademaker, assistant secretary of state for arms control, met Moldovan officials on Thursday to push Washington's position on Russia's arms and troops withdrawal, which Moscow earlier promised to do by the end of last year.
"Rademaker underscored the position of the United States and Nato alliance that the adapted CFE (Conventional Forces in Europe) treaty cannot be ratified until Russia fulfils its Istanbul commitments, including the withdrawal of munitions and troops from Moldova," he said in a statement.
The CFE treaty, signed in the dying days of the Cold War, limits the number of battle tanks, heavy artillery, combat aircraft and attack helicopters deployed and stored between the Atlantic Ocean and Russia's Ural mountains.
Russia is anxious for the adapted CFE to be ratified so the three Baltic states, due to join Nato at a summit in Istanbul in June, can sign up. Some Russian officials fear these states could become Nato outposts for nuclear arms or army bases.
Western nations say until Russian forces are pulled back from Moldova and Georgia they cannot ratify the treaty.
Russian troops have helped maintain an uneasy truce in Moldova since they intervened in 1992 to end a civil war with Dnestr, a Russian-speaking sliver of land which broke away from Moldova in 1990 before the collapse of Soviet rule.
At a 1999 Istanbul summit of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Moscow undertook to leave the region and remove weapons inherited after the fall of the Soviet Union, by 2002. The deadline was later extended by a year.