Russia says U.S. on dangerous path over arms control

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States is upsetting the nuclear arms balance by failing to offer a fully-fledged replacement for the START arms control treaty when it expires next year, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, signed in Moscow in 1991, set ceilings on the size of the Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals and became a symbol of the end of the Cold War.

President George W. Bush's administration plans to let it expire and replace it with a less formal agreement that eliminates strict verification requirements.

"I believe this is a most dangerous path," the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily quoted Lavrov as saying in an interview to be published on Tuesday.

"All this increases instability several times over. Parity in strategic offensive and defensive weapons is being undermined," Lavrov said in a pre-publication copy of the interview, which was obtained by Reuters.

Lavrov said Bush, at a meeting with Russian leaders on the Black Sea in April, had promised new proposals on a replacement for START that would take into account Russian concerns.

"We have been given such promises several times," Lavrov was quoted as saying. "We are still waiting."

Lavrov said the need for a binding, verifiable arms treaty was greater than ever at a time when the United States is planning to station elements of a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Washington says the shield is needed to protect against rocket attacks from what it calls rogue states, specifically Iran, but Moscow says it believes the system is targeted against its own nuclear arsenal.

Already tense relations between Russia and the United States worsened after Russia's military intervention in its ex-Soviet neighbor Georgia in August.

Russia said it had to act to protect civilians from Georgian aggression, while Washington and other Western capitals called Russia's response disproportionate.

But Lavrov said Russia remained committed to the so-called "2+2" talks, which bring together the Russian foreign and defense ministers with the U.S. Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense.

The last such meeting -- to discuss the missile shield and strategic arms control treaties -- was in Moscow in March this year. "We are ready to meet again," Lavrov was quoted as saying in the interview.

(Reporting by Tatiana Ustinova; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)