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US defence secretary Jim Mattis said on Sunday that the United States was consulting with its European allies on an arms control treaty, as Nato members urged Washington to try to bring Russia back into compliance with the pact rather than quit it.
President Donald Trump said on October 20th that Washington planned to quit the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty that Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, and Ronald Reagan had signed in 1987.
Washington has cited Russia’s alleged violation of the treaty – a charge Moscow denies – as its reason for leaving it. Russia in turn accuses Washington of breaking the pact and says it is working to answer American questions about the pact.
“We are in consultations with our European counterparts, I was speaking about it the day before with the German defence minister and so, as I said, the consultations continue,” Mr Mattis told reporters travelling with him to Prague.
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He will be meeting his Czech counterpart and prime minister Andrej Babis during a short trip to Prague.
Mattis said ministers from Nato would be meeting in Brussels in December and at that point he would have some kind of “culminating point”.
European members of Nato urged the United States on Thursday to try to bring Russia back into compliance with a nuclear arms control treaty rather than quitting it itself, diplomats said, seeking to avoid a split in the alliance that Moscow could exploit.
European allies see the INF treaty as a pillar of arms control and, while accepting that Moscow is violating it by developing new weapons, they are concerned its collapse could lead to a new arms race with possibly a new generation of US nuclear missiles stationed on the Continent.
List of questions
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Sunday that Moscow has started preparing answers to the questions related to the arms control pact delivered by US officials, RIA news agency quoted him as saying.
“Just a week ago, a couple of days ahead of the announcement of the [American] aim to leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, Americans via their embassy in Moscow sent the Russian foreign ministry an extensive list of questions which are a concern to them,” Lavrov said.
Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying that his ministry had sent the list to the defence ministry and other governmental bodies but the fact that the notice given was short “does not contribute to the sustainable dialogue and predictability [in the US behaviour]”.
Earlier this week Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Trump’s plans to develop new ballistic missiles after the United States quits a landmark arms control pact were “extremely dangerous”.
Mattis said he had asked his Nato counterparts after the last summit if they had any ideas on how to bring Russia back into compliance of INF treaty, but so far none had come back to him.
Heather Conley, a former US State Department official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Mattis would receive a range of questions from European allies, such as when a formal notification would be made and whether it signalled a new arms race.
“It just deepens the uncertainty. Our allies do not know where US leadership is going, what it’s going to do from the day-to-day basis,” Conley said. – Reuters