SHANGHAI, Feb 2 (Reuters) - The United States should resolve its differences with Russia through dialogue instead of threatening to withdraw from an important nuclear arms control agreement between the two nations, China’s foreign ministry said on Saturday.

The United States’ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that Washington would withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia within six months unless Russia returned to “full and verifiable compliance” with the treaty.

Washington claims Russia’s new Novator 9M729 cruise missile violates the agreement, which bans ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5,500 km (310 to 3,420 miles).

“As an important bilateral treaty in arms control and disarmament, the Intermediate-Range Treaty has great significance in improving relations between major powers, strengthening international and regional peace, and maintaining global strategic balance and stability,” China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement posted on its website.

“China is opposed to U.S. withdrawal action and urges the United States and Russia to handle their differences properly through constructive dialogue,” the statement said, warning that unilateral withdrawal could trigger “negative consequences”.

The agreement officially expires in early 2021 but can be extended by another five years if both Washington and Moscow agree. However, Russian officials have accused the United States of inventing a pretext to end the treaty, allowing them to develop new weapons.

China’s foreign ministry said it was not in favour of drawing up a multilateral arms control agreement to replace the Intermediate-Range Treaty, saying the issues were too complicated and that existing agreements should instead be maintained and implemented. (Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Joseph Radford)</s>SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The United States should resolve its differences with Russia through dialogue instead of threatening to withdraw from an important nuclear arms control agreement between the two nations, China’s foreign ministry said on Saturday.

The United States’ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that Washington would withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia within six months unless Russia returned to “full and verifiable compliance” with the treaty.

Washington claims Russia’s new Novator 9M729 cruise missile violates the agreement, which bans ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5,500 km (310 to 3,420 miles).

“As an important bilateral treaty in arms control and disarmament, the Intermediate-Range Treaty has great significance in improving relations between major powers, strengthening international and regional peace, and maintaining global strategic balance and stability,” China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement posted on its website.

“China is opposed to U.S. withdrawal action and urges the United States and Russia to handle their differences properly through constructive dialogue,” the statement said, warning that unilateral withdrawal could trigger “negative consequences”.

The agreement officially expires in early 2021 but can be extended by another five years if both Washington and Moscow agree. However, Russian officials have accused the United States of inventing a pretext to end the treaty, allowing them to develop new weapons.

China’s foreign ministry said it was not in favour of drawing up a multilateral arms control agreement to replace the Intermediate-Range Treaty, saying the issues were too complicated and that existing agreements should instead be maintained and implemented.</s>The United States announced Friday that it will withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, an agreement that dates back to the Cold War.

The US will suspend its obligations under the 1987 pact on Saturday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.</s>BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — European Union foreign ministers raised concerns Friday about the spread of nuclear weapons as the United States readied to pull out of a key Cold War-era treaty, blaming Russia for violating it.

The Trump administration is poised to announce later Friday that it is withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty that the U.S. agreed with the Soviet Union in 1987. The pact bans production, testing and deployment of land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 500-5,500 kilometers (310-3,400 miles).

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini called on both sides to stick to the treaty.

“What we definitely don’t want to see is our continent going back to being a battlefield or a place where other super-powers confront themselves. This belongs to a faraway history,” Mogherini told reporters in Romania.

“It is important that disarmament and the international arms control architecture are put back on the international agenda,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said. “Without the INF treaty there will be less security, but we need to take under consideration that the INF treaty was violated by the Russian side.”

The Pentagon has shared information with NATO allies asserting that Russia’s new 9M729 missile system falls within the treaty. It believes the ground-fired cruise missile could give Moscow the ability to launch a nuclear strike in Europe with little or no notice.

Moscow insists the missile has a range of less than 500 kilometers.

In October, President Donald Trump warned that the U.S. would abandon the treaty because of alleged Russian violations. If Moscow did not return to compliance, Washington said it would start the six-month process of leaving the pact from Feb. 2.

NATO-Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said that Russia showed no sign as late as last week that it was willing to return to compliance in talks with allied ambassadors.

“The fear is to see proliferation, to see nuclear weapons developed, which are weapons that are dangerous for the entire territory of Europe,” Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said.

“I hope that our American colleagues, including outside the treaty framework, are going to keep working on this dialogue with Russia,” he said. “It’s not by leaving the multilateral framework that we’re going to succeed in having greater pressure or efficiency in the fight against nonproliferation.”

The Europeans are keen to avoid a repeat of the missile crisis in the 1980s. NATO allies decided to deploy U.S. cruise and Pershing 2 ballistic missiles in Europe in 1983 as negotiations with Moscow faltered over its stationing of SS-20 missiles in Eastern Europe.

“I see it not only with concern but with regret that the INF should belong to the past,” said Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissel. “You can negotiate a free trade agreement in five years but disarmament negotiations, they absorb generations of negotiators. Sometimes you have 40 years of negotiations going on.”

Ministers from the Baltic countries close to Russia’s borders — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — were mostly in support of the U.S. move and blame Russia.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Antanas Linkevicius said that losing such a treaty always means “less stability, more uncertainty, definitely it’s bad. But I’m saying what is the option, what is the recipe to say that countries must comply (with) the agreements they made?”

But Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said Russia still has time to return to compliance.

“It is up to Russia to show if they still want to meet the conditions. There is a six-month notice period so there is still time to meet the conditions and that is what we should be banking on,” Blok said.

Cook reported from Brussels. AP writers Raf Casert in Brussels and David Rising in Berlin contributed.</s>WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is poised to announce Friday that it is withdrawing from a treaty that has been a centerpiece of superpower arms control since the Cold War and whose demise some analysts worry could fuel a new arms race.

An American withdrawal, which has been expected for months, would follow years of unresolved dispute over Russian compliance with the pact, known as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, treaty. It was the first arms control measure to ban an entire class of weapons: ground-launched cruise missiles with a range between 500 kilometers (310 miles) and 5,500 kilometers (3,400 miles). Russia denies that it has been in violation.

U.S. officials also have expressed worry that China, which is not party to the 1987 treaty, is gaining a significant military advantage in Asia by deploying large numbers of missiles with ranges beyond the treaty's limit. Leaving the INF treaty would allow the Trump administration to counter the Chinese, but it's unclear how it would do that.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in early December that Washington would give Moscow 60 days to return to compliance before it gave formal notice of withdrawal, with actual withdrawal taking place six months later. The 60-day deadline expires on Saturday, and the administration is expected to say as early as Friday that efforts to work out a compliance deal have failed and that it would suspend its compliance with the treaty's terms.

The State Department said Pompeo would make a public statement on Friday morning, but it did not mention the topic.

During remarks made at a news conference in Bucharest, Secretary General Stoltenberg, said there are no signs of getting a compliance deal with Russia.

"So we must prepare for a world without the INF Treaty," he said.

Technically, a U.S. withdrawal would take effect six months after this week's notification, leaving a small window for saving the treaty. However, in talks this week in Beijing, the U.S. and Russia reported no breakthrough in their dispute, leaving little reason to think either side would change its stance on whether a Russian cruise missile violates the pact.

A Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, was quoted by the Russian state news agency Tass as saying after the Beijing talks Thursday, "Unfortunately, there is no progress. The position of the American side is very tough and like an ultimatum." He said he expects Washington now to suspend its obligations under the treaty, although he added that Moscow remains ready to "search for solutions" that could keep the treaty in force.

U.S. withdrawal raises the prospect of further deterioration in U.S.-Russian relations, which already are arguably at the lowest point in decades, and debate among U.S. allies in Europe over whether Russia's alleged violations warrant a countermeasure such as deployment of an equivalent American missile in Europe. The U.S. has no nuclear-capable missiles based in Europe; the last of that type and range were withdrawn in line with the INF treaty.

The prospect of U.S. withdrawal from the INF pact has stirred concern globally. The mayor of Des Moines, Iowa, Frank Cownie, is among dozens of local officials and lawmakers in the U.S., Canada, Europe and elsewhere who signed a letter this week to President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin expressing worry at the "unraveling" of the INF treaty and other arms constraints.

"Withdrawing from treaties takes a step in the wrong direction," Cownie said in a telephone interview. "It's wasn't just Des Moines, Iowa. It's people from all around this country that are concerned about the future of our cities, of our country, of this planet."

The American ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, set the rhetorical stage for Washington's withdrawal announcement by asserting Thursday that Russia has been in violation for years, including in Ukraine. She said in a tweet and a video message about the INF treaty that Russia is to blame for its demise.

"Russia consistently refuses to acknowledge its violation and continues to push disinformation and false narratives regarding its illegal missile," she said. "When only one party respects an arms control treaty while the other side flaunts it, it leaves one side vulnerable, no one is safer, and (it) discredits the very idea of arms control."

Nuclear weapons experts at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said in a statement this week that while Russia's violation of the INF treaty is a serious problem, U.S. withdrawal under current circumstances would be counterproductive.

"Leaving the INF treaty will unleash a new missile competition between the United States and Russia," they said.

Kingston Reif, director for disarmament at the Arms Control Association, said Thursday the Trump administration has failed to exhaust diplomatic options to save the treaty. What's more, "it has no strategy to prevent Russia from building and fielding even more intermediate-range missiles in the absence of the agreement."

Reif said the period between now and August, when the U.S. withdrawal would take effect, offers a last chance to save the treaty, but he sees little prospect of that happening. He argues that Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, is "unlikely to miss the opportunity to kill an agreement he has long despised."

Associated Press writer Lynn Berry contributed to this report.</s>Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to announce the U.S. intention to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty as soon as Friday, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the decision.

Russia has been in violation of the Cold War era arms control agreement for more than five years. The U.S. gave Russia 60 days to return to compliance in December when Pompeo announced at a NATO Foreign Ministers meeting that Russia was in "material breach" of the treaty.

"We either bury our head in the sand, or we take common sense action in response to Russia’s flagrant disregard of the express terms of the INF treaty," Pompeo said from NATO headquarters.

The INF Treaty prevents the U.S. and Russia from possessing any land-based cruise missiles that can strike within a 500 to 5,500 kilometers — 310 to 3,410 miles — range. The deal signed in 1987 by President Reagan and Soviet leader Gorbachev was primarily designed to keep ground-based nuclear weapons out of Europe.

The announcement was not unexpected but some arms control experts have expressed concerns U.S. withdrawal could lead to a new arms race.

"The INF Treaty continues to serve as a check on some of the most destabilizing types of nuclear weapons that the U.S. and Russia could deploy," says former senior diplomat Thomas Countryman, now chairman of the board of directors of the Arms Control Association. "Without the treaty, there is a serious risk of a new intermediate-range, ground-based missile arms race in Europe and beyond."

With the deadline in two days and both sides claiming no progress has been made, the U.S. is expected to formally suspend its obligations under the treaty Saturday and begin a six-month process of withdrawal.

"Our current situation, in which Russia continues to violate the treaty while we abide by the treaty, is untenable," Under Secretary of State for Arms Control Andrea Thompson forewarned earlier this month. "Violations must have consequences."</s>Those of us who grew up during the 1950s and 1960s, those of us who were herded into the basement of our Catholic elementary school every afternoon for 13 days in October of 1962, those of us who remember being warned never to look directly at the blast because you'd hurt your eyes, as though you wouldn't already have been vaporized into a human shadow already, we all remember learning the words, "nuclear proliferation" from the evening news.

We remember something called the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty as something that seemed to unburden our parents of nameless terrors. (Looking back through time, we see it as the last great act in the presidency of John F. Kennedy.) Therefore, we know quite well the kind of idiot's Russian roulette this administration is playing. We lived our entire childhoods knowing that somebody, somewhere, was always spinning the chamber and pulling the trigger.

(Can we pause here for a moment and remember that Mike Pompeo is a jumped-up Tea Party congressman from Kansas who is in the upper levels of the national executive only because he climbed aboard the Trump Train and was standing there when it was determined that Rex Tillerson needed to go? He has enabled all of the president*'s worst instincts on foreign policy, and this move is only the latest example. There is no "good" member of this Cabinet—only fools, grifters, and incompetents. It is quite striking in its uniformity in this regard.) 



I'm not sure how giving Vladimir Putin everything he wants is supposed to hurt him, but I am not the Secretary of State. This is an odds-on decision to start another nuclear arms race in Europe, which can only hype up the ambitious Russian ganglord's dreams of a gangster-capitalist new USSR. The INF Treaty was one of the Reagan Administration's shining accomplishments, and one of the first indications that Mikhail Gorbachev was a real reformer.

It was the first arms-control agreement that required a reduction in nuclear weapons rather than simply freezing the number of them in place. It brought Europe out from under a dark shadow. (These were the days in which nuclear war was again thought to be feasible, if not imminent.) It allowed people in Europe to breathe a little easier. For all his faults, Reagan made the INF Treaty a landmark in nuclear diplomacy, and it led directly to President George H.W. Bush's START treaty which cut in half the nuclear arsenals of both countries. Whereupon, of course, a short time later, there was no Soviet Union any more. You want my blogger's guess? The START agreement is due to expire in 2021. That will be the next target for this administration*'s reckless vandalism, if this president* were to be re-elected.

If your partner in a treaty cheats, you use the mechanisms of the treaty to hold the partner to account. You don't simply abandon the treaty—unless, of course, you want to start arming up in Europe all over again and (maybe) don't mind much if Russia does the same thing. Were I an ordinary Czech, say, I might wonder if two oligarchs weren't actually working together to dominate the European landscape. Several months ago, arms-control expert Joseph Cirincione made this very point when the idea of abandoning the INF agreement was first floated.

Cirincione further argued that the real vandal here wasn't Pompeo, but, rather, National Security Adviser John Bolton, a truly bloodthirsty crackpot who'd tear down the entire global political order if it made him feel like Julius Caesar. Cirincione wrote:

Scotching the INF Treaty is such a bad idea that you have to wonder whether or not the administration* is doing the Putin government another favor. If Putin lards up his western frontier with new generations of intermediate missiles, what will this administration*'s response? Bolton will want to arm up in equal measure. The president*'s truckling to the Russian president will collide with that. What does Bolton think the "global responsibilities" of the United States actually are? Can't anyone here play this game? Which way to the basement?

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.</s>Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Friday that the US is suspending the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a key pact with Russia that has been a centerpiece of European security since the Cold War.

“For years, Russia has violated the terms of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty without remorse,” Pompeo said, speaking from the State Department. “Russia’s violations put millions of Europeans and Americans at greater risk.”

“It is our duty to respond appropriately,” Pompeo said, adding that the US had provided “ample time” to Russia to return to compliance.

The long-expected suspension, which has raised concerns about a renewed arms race with Moscow and put European allies on edge, goes into effect on Saturday. Pompeo’s announcement starts a 180-day clock to complete withdrawal unless Russia returns to compliance with the 1987 agreement.

President Donald Trump and his senior officials had been signaling for months that they were ready to pull out of the INF treaty, which the US accuses Moscow of violating since 2014.

“The United States has fully adhered to the INF Treaty for more than 30 years, but we will not remain constrained by its terms while Russia misrepresents its actions,” Trump said in a statement Friday. “We cannot be the only country in the world unilaterally bound by this treaty, or any other.”

Russia and the US are the only two parties to the treaty, but it significantly affects European security.

The ground-based nuclear tipped cruise missiles covered by the bilateral agreement can fly between 310 to 3,100 miles, making them a threat to Europe, where officials have unanimously backed the US decision, even as they consider their next steps and admit having little to no optimism that the treaty can be saved.

In a statement, NATO said America’s allies “fully support” the US decision because of Russia’s threat to Euro-Atlantic security and its refusal to provide any credible response or take any steps towards full and verifiable compliance.

NATO urged Russia to use the next six months to “return to full and verifiable compliance to preserve the INF Treaty.”

Even as they voice support for the US decision, the prospect of the INF’s dissolution is deeply worrying for Europe governments, where officials expressed deep concern about what the US decision will mean.

Russia is likely to use the US withdrawal as an excuse to deploy systems elsewhere, many analysts said, possibly unleashing an arms race of previously prohibited weapons systems.

“The bigger picture is what kind of sign you’re sending out, what message you’re sending,” said one European official. “For us, this treaty was extremely important for our security. What are we looking at instead” if it is scrapped, the official asked.</s>The United States is suspending its participation in a key arms control agreement with Russia, the Trump administration announced Friday.

The decision to halt the U.S. role in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty has raised concerns about a renewed arms race with Moscow. But it's not a surprise: The Trump administration has been signaling for months it will walk away from the treaty, alleging Russia has not met its obligations under the agreement for years.

"Countries must be held accountable when they break the rules," said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a news conference. "Russia has jeopardized the United States' security interests, and we can no longer be restricted by the treaty while Russia shamelessly violates it."

President Donald Trump, too, issued a warning to Russia that hinted at another concern: that China, too, wants to take advantage of the existence of the treaty to surge ahead in its own missile capabilities.

"We cannot be the only country in the world unilaterally bound by this treaty, or any other," Trump said in a statement. "We will move forward with developing our own military response options and will work with NATO and our other allies and partners to deny Russia any military advantage from its unlawful conduct."

The landmark 1987 treaty required the United States and what was then the Soviet Union to "eliminate and permanently forswear all of their nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers," according to the Arms Control Association.

Trump and some of his top aides, including national security adviser John Bolton, have long expressed skepticism about international mechanisms that they feel unduly constrain the United States. Trump already has pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate change agreement.

But U.S. frustrations with the INF Treaty began well before Trump took office.

Since at least 2014, under the administration of President Barack Obama, the United States has accused Russia of violating its INF Treaty obligations, including one requiring it "not to possess, produce, or flight-test" a ground-launched cruise missile having a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers, according to the ACA.

The United States — backed by its NATO allies — has said Russia must eliminate its 9M729 cruise missile system to come back into compliance. Russian officials insist the missile system does not violate the treaty, and that the United States and Europe have not properly considered Moscow's proposals to save the pact.

Trump administration officials had told Russia it had until Feb. 2 to return to compliance, saying that if that deadline is missed, the United States will begin the formal six-month withdrawal process.

Pompeo said the United States is still "hopeful" Russia will change its posture and will continue to keep conversing with Moscow.

Read this next: German minister and MEP candidate goes after Facebook</s>PARIS (Reuters) - The French government called on Russia on Friday to use the six-month period triggered by the United States's decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) to comply with its obligations under the landmark accord.

The French Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it regretted the U.S. decision to quit the treaty in six months unless Moscow ends its alleged violations of the 1987 arms control agreement.

The ministry added that France will encourage dialogue with Russia during the six-month period and consult with NATO alliance partners.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.

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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announces that the United States is suspending its role in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, an agreement made in 1987 with the USSR (and, by extension, its successor state Russia) banning both countries from possessing or testing nuclear and conventional intermediate-range missiles, as well as their launchers, citing Russian non-compliance with the treaty.