MOSCOW -Moscow on Sunday warned US President Donald Trump that his plan toditch a Cold War-era nuclear weapons treaty with Russia was a dangerousstep.
Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said this “would be a verydangerous step” and accused the US of risking international condemnation ina bid for “total supremacy” in the military sphere.
He insisted that Moscow observed “in the strictest way” thethree-decade-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as theINF, while accusing Washington of “flagrant violations.”
The treaty was signed in 1987 by the then US president Ronald Reagan andSoviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
But Trump on Saturday claimed Russia had long violated it.
“We´re the ones who have stayed in the agreement and we´ve honored theagreement, but Russia has not unfortunately honored the agreement, so we´regoing to terminate the agreement and we´re going to pull out,” he toldreporters.
“Russia has violated the agreement. They´ve been violating it for manyyears. I don´t know why president (Barack) Obama didn´t negotiate or pullout. And we´re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go outand do weapons (while) we´re not allowed to.”
Trump´s National Security Advisor John Bolton was set to arrive in Moscowon Sunday evening and meet next week with Russia´s Foreign Minister SergeiLavrov.
That comes ahead of what is expected to be a second summit between Trumpand Russian leader Vladimir Putin this year.
Bolton was also set to meet with Security Council Secretary NikolaiPatrushev and Putin aide Yuri Ushakov. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saida “possible meeting” was being prepared between Putin and Bolton.
Deputy foreign minister Ryabkov said Sunday he hoped Bolton would explainthe US plans “more substantively and clearly.”
The Trump administration has complained of Moscow´s deployment of 9M729missiles, which Washington says can travel more than 310 miles (500kilometres), and thus violate the INF treaty.
The treaty, which banned missiles that could travel between 310 and 3,400miles, resolved a crisis that had begun in the 1980s with the deployment ofSoviet SS-20 nuclear-tipped, intermediate-range ballistic missilestargeting Western capitals.
*- US or Russia at fault? -*
A Russian foreign ministry official earlier accused Washington ofimplementing policy “toward dismantling the nuclear deal”.
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Washington “has approached this step over the course of many years bydeliberately and step by step destroying the basis for the agreement,” saidthe unnamed official, quoted by Russia´s three main news agencies.
The official accused the US of backing out of international agreements thatput it on an equal footing with other countries because it wanted toprotect American “exceptionalism.”
Russian senator Alexei Pushkov wrote on Twitter that the move was “thesecond powerful blow against the whole system of strategic stability in theworld” after Washington´s 2001 withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missiletreaty.
“And again, the initiator of the dissolution of the agreement is the US,”he added.
Bolton himself is pressuring Trump to leave the INF and has blocked talksto extend the New Start treaty on strategic missiles set to expire in 2021,according to The Guardian newspaper.
US withdrawal from the INF “will destroy any prospects of extending the NewStart treaty,” the head of the Russian senate´s foreign affairs committeeKonstantin Kosachev warned on Facebook.
A US withdrawal from the INF could also target China. As a non-signatory,Beijing can develop without constraints intermediate-range nuclear weapons.
US-Russia ties are under deep strain over accusations that Moscow meddledin the 2016 presidential election. The two countries are also at odds overRussian support for the Syrian government in the country´s civil war, andthe conflict in Ukraine.
On Friday, the US Justice Department indicted the finance chief of Russia´sleading troll farm for allegedly interfering with US elections, the firstperson to face charges involving the 2018 congressional mid-term vote.
Russia accused the US of fabricating the charges.
While no new summit between Trump and Putin has yet been announced, one isexpected in the near future.
The two leaders will be in Paris on November 11 to attend commemorationsmarking the centenary of the end of World War I.
A senior Trump administration official, who spoke on condition ofanonymity, said another potential date could be when both presidents attendthe Group of 20 meeting on November 30 to December 1. – APP/AFP
