US: Russia violated nuclear missile treaty
Washington says Russia has conducted tests in violation of the 1987 treaty and calls for immediate talks.
Russia has conducted nuclear tests in violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a senior US administration official has told Al Jazeera.
Washington accused Russia of testing a new ground-launched cruise missile, breaking the treaty that President Ronald Reagan signed with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
“This is a very serious matter which we have attempted to address with Russia for some time now,” the US administration official said on Monday.
It suggests that Russia is moving away from a long US-Russia tradition of restraining the most dangerous weaponseven as they have serious disagreements on all sorts of issues.
“We encourage Russia to return to compliance with its obligations under the treaty and to eliminate any prohibited items in a verifiable manner,” the official added.
Russian officials said they had looked into the allegations and considered the matter closed.
The Obama administration has expressed its concern over possible violations before, but this is the first time that the administration has formally accused Russia of violating the treaty.
The accusation comes in the wake of a Malaysian passenger jet being shot down in Ukraine, and as the US and the European Union seek to ramp up sanctions against Russia.
The US administration on Tuesday is to release an annual report, which is normally due out in April, on compliance with arms control treaties.
The New York Times newspaper reported in January that Washington informed its NATO partners that Russia had tested a ground-launched cruise missile.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, ratified in 1988, was designed to eliminate ground-launched cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500km.
State Department officials had hinted that a formal determination that Russia had violated the treaty could be forthcoming, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based research and advocacy group.
He said the violation would not represent a new military threat to the US and its European allies, given Russia’s existing missile arsenal. But in an interview, Kimball called the infraction “disturbing”.
“It suggests that Russia is moving away from a long US-Russia tradition of restraining the most dangerous weapons even as they have serious disagreements on all sorts of issues,” he said.
The United States notified Russia of its determination and called for senior-level talks “with the aim of assuring the United States that Russia will come back into compliance” with the treaty.
“The United States will, of course, consult with allies on this matter to take into account the impact of this Russian violation on our collective security if Russia does not return to compliance,” the official said.