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ForMin Aurescu: I see no issue for Russian Federation, anyone else, coming to visit Deveselu base
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, said, on Thursday, that he sees no issue for the Russian Federation or any other side to visit the military base in Deveselu, but evoked, in context, the principle of reciprocity.
"I see absolutely no problem for the Russian Federation or anyone else to come and visit the base in Deveselu and personally convince themselves there is nothing else than what we said. There is no threat towards the Russian Federation. But there is at the same time, and I believe it's an absolutely logical demand, there is a demand for reciprocity: if the Russian Federation is interested in checking what I already believe they know, namely that this base doesn't represent, in any case, a threat, but we, the allies, including Romania, have the right to visit missile bases ourselves, deployed, for example, on the territory of the Russian Federation. I believe it's an absolutely normal request," said the head of Romanian diplomacy at private broadcaster Digi24.
He emphasized that the principle of transparency regarding the Deveselu anti-missile shield was applied ever since the negotiation of its installation.
"We discussed since the moment we negotiated the presence of the anti-missile shield in Romania with US partners, we discussed openly the possibility of transparency measures and we discussed also recently, in this period, with the United States. We have nothing to hide in Deveselu," showed the minister.
He emphasized the fact that the allies have always said that "one would find there interceptors that target possible ballistic missile threats from outside the Euro-Atlantic space, so not from Russia."
"The positioning of this base in Deveselu relative to the Russian Federation is of such a nature that it does not present a real threat to the intercontinental or any other type of missiles of the Russian Federation and there are certainly no offensive rockets on this base, as the Russian Federation claims," Bogdan Aurescu said.