NATO violates commitment of placing no infrastructure on former GDR’s territory — Lavrov

MOSCOW, March 12. /TASS/. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization keeps violating the commitment written in the ‘Two Plus Four Agreement’ on placing no infrastructure on the territory of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with US bloggers Mario Nawfal, Larry Johnson and Andrew Napolitano.

"At that time when Germany was reunified it was written in the legal paper this "2+4 process" that the GDR would become part of Federal Republic of Germany and thus would become part of NATO, but there would be no NATO infrastructure whatsoever on the former GDR's territory," Lavrov pointed out.

"They are backtracking on this one now. They are deploying some NATO command in East Germany," he said.

False promises and crashed hopes

Russia’s top diplomat recalled how then-US Secretary of State James Baker and other NATO officials had promised to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that the military alliance "wouldn't move an inch to the East" and when they had modified this stance when East Germany and West Germany were merging.

"It was agreed on paper legally. Now they say that there is no legal obligation not to expand NATO," Lavrov pointed out.

"Fine, if you can only implement your promise by court then of course you need legal obligations all over you. But if you are a person of dignity, a man of dignity, if you agreed on something by political commitment you have to deliver," Russia’s top diplomat said.

Responding to a question about the reaction in Russia’s Foreign Ministry to NATO’s expansion, Lavrov stressed that Russia was "very much disappointed to watch how NATO not only accepted, admitted East Germany, but by 2004 the NATO expansion included the three Baltic republics, former republics of the Soviet Union."

"Then this ball was rolling, picking up more and more contenders - those who wanted to become NATO members," he added.

"It's a long story of course and it is a story about illusions, beliefs, disappointments about partnership degenerating into rivalry and then confrontation and animosities," Lavrov concluded.

Two Plus Four Treaty

The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (the Two Plus Four Agreement) was signed on September 12, 1990 in Moscow. The document reaffirmed the consent by the allied powers of the anti-Hitler coalition during World War II to the reunification of Germany into a single state and defined the term of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the territory of the former GDR by 1994.

Under clause 3, article 5 of the Treaty, foreign armed forces may not be stationed or deployed in that part of Germany.