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Baltics hit back at Putin's "regrettable and misleading" speech - Apr 26, 2007 - 'I evaluate his announcement with regret, because in fact it undermines the treaty as such,' Latvian Foreign Minister Artis Pabriks told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. The announcement is a 'pretext' for Russia not to comply with the 1999 Istanbul agreement, by which Russia undertook to withdraw its troops from Georgia and Moldova, he added.

Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet was equally dismissive, saying that the statement was regrettable and misleading, a foreign ministry statement read. 'President Putin should know that (the CFE treaty) is not in force, because it has not been ratified by all parties,' Paet said. 'Most of the countries have not ratified it because Russia has not met its Istanbul obligations of withdrawing its armed forces from Georgia and Moldova,' he added.

'Ratification by NATO allies of the adapted treaty is awaiting Russia's ... continued fulfilment of its Istanbul summit commitments regarding withdrawals of Russian forces from Georgia and Moldova,' a US State Department fact sheet said.

And according to both Paet and Pabriks, the Baltic states - who joined NATO in 2004 and were not signatory to either the 1990 treaty or the 1999 amendment - cannot make any move to join the treaty until its original signatories have ratified it. 'Russia never honoured its commitment to pull its troops out of Georgia and Moldova. That makes it impossible for Latvia to join the treaty,' Pabriks said bluntly.