ForMin Melescanu: Russia maintaining highly rigid position regarding relations with Romania

Russia maintains a highly rigid position as regards its relations with Romania, and one of the arguments it resorts to in order to motivate this attitude is the Deveselu ballistic missile shield, Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu on Monday told the Adevarul Live webcast. 

"From my point of view, Russia is definitely one of the world's great powers, particularly in military and political terms, but as they say, it takes two if you want to dance the tango. The EU has this openness (...) but this does not mean we can acquiesce to everything the Russian Federation wants, some of which we don't always understand and cannot discern very well," the Foreign Minister said. 

"We need these relations to be based on the mutual recognition of our interests, on respect for the regulations and principles of international law and most of all, on common interest," Melescanu stressed. 

He went on to explain that "the Deveselu facility has a purely defensive character." "Those are not ballistic missiles, but anti-ballistic missiles that serve to protect Romania's territory, but also the entire territory of the North Atlantic Alliance," Melescanu said. 

"The Deveselu facility is purely defensive, it has no offensive capacity whatsoever, it's designed only to intercept ballistic missiles that could be headed for NATO member countries. (...) In Romania we need consistent positions on this subject," Melescanu said. 

"The world must understand that this is a strictly defensive facility that does not endanger any of Romania's neighbors, and at the same time it is an installation that is intended exclusively to defend the territory of Romania and of the other NATO member states against a ballistic missile attack, whatever non-NATO territory this might come from," Melescanu added.