AFP :
White House national security advisor John Bolton on Monday began two days of meetings with senior Russian officials following Washington’s weekend announcement of its withdrawal from a Cold War-era nuclear weapons treaty.
The Moscow visit by Bolton was planned before the Saturday announcement by President Donald Trump that the US was ditching the three-decade-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as the INF, a move Moscow has already denounced as “dangerous.” The treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear and conventional missiles was signed in 1987 by then US president Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, who on Sunday said that “dropping these agreements… shows a lack of wisdom” and was a “mistake”.
Bolton arrived in Russia Sunday and is set to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. On Monday morning he met his Russian counterpart, Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev.
On Tuesday he may also speak about the treaty with President Vladimir Putin, according to Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who said the Russian leader was looking for “clarifications” about US intentions.
Peskov told journalists Monday that ditching the treaty “will make the world more dangerous” and rejected US claims Moscow has violated the pact, instead accusing Washington of doing so.
“It is the United States that is eroding the foundations and main elements of this pact” with its missile defense capabilities and drones, he said.
But Trump on Saturday claimed Russia had long violated the treaty.
“We’re the ones who have stayed in the agreement and we’ve honoured the agreement, but Russia has not unfortunately honoured the agreement, so we’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out,” he told reporters. “Russia has violated the agreement. They’ve been violating it for many years,” he said.
“And we’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons (while) we’re not allowed to.”
The row comes ahead of what is expected to be a second summit between Trump and Putin this year.
The Trump administration has complained of Moscow’s deployment of Novator 9M729 missiles, which Washington says fall under the treaty’s ban on missiles that can travel distances of between 310 and 3,400 miles (500 and 5,500 kilometres). The INF resolved a crisis over Soviet nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles targeting Western capitals.
The latest rift could have “the most lamentable consequences”, political analyst Alexei Arbatov told Interfax news agency, dragging Russia into a “new cycle of the arms race”.
