MOSCOW (Reuters) - A top Russian general said 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 Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky said."We will invite our NATO colleagues to attend," he told a news conference, but gave no further details about the exercise.
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.
An Arabic newspaper said last Sunday that some ex-Soviet tactical nuclear warheads, which Ukraine should have handed over to Russia after becoming a nuclear-free state, had got into the hands of the al Qaeda group blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks in the United States.
Baluyevsky echoed an earlier Ukrainian denial of the report.
"All weapons deployed in Ukraine were taken away to Russia. I am not aware of any event in which a single warhead went missing," he said.
"All nuclear warheads are in place and not a single warhead now belonging to Russia has been sold or stolen."
