Trump adviser tells Putin: We'll quit
arms control treaty you're breaking
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[October 24, 2018]
By Andrew Osborn and Vladimir Soldatkin
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Washington will press
ahead with a plan to quit a landmark nuclear arms control pact despite
objections from Russia and some European countries, senior U.S. official
John Bolton said on Tuesday, after meeting Russian President Vladimir
Putin.
Bolton had a 90-minute meeting in the Kremlin with Putin which resulted
in an agreement for the Russian leader to hold talks with U.S. President
Donald Trump in Paris next month, their first meeting since a July
summit in Helsinki.
But the Moscow talks appeared to yield no breakthrough over Trump's
stated desire for Washington to leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear
Forces (INF), a step Moscow has decried as dangerous and many European
countries have warned could reignite a Cold War-style arms race.
"There's a new strategic reality out there," Bolton, who is National
Security Advisor to Trump, told a news conference, adding that the Cold
War-era treaty did not address new missile threats from countries such
as China, Iran and North Korea, and was therefore redundant.
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"In terms of filing the formal notice of withdrawal, that has not been
filed but it will be filed in due course," he said, suggesting it was a
process that could take several months.
Moscow has warned Washington it will be forced to respond in kind to
restore the military balance if Trump carries through with his threat to
quit the INF treaty, a 1987 agreement that eliminated all short- and
intermediate-range land-based nuclear and conventional missiles held by
both countries in Europe.
Putin used the start of the meeting with Bolton to take the White House
to task over what he said were a series of unprovoked U.S. steps against
Moscow. But Bolton told reporters afterwards Russian missiles were a
threat and signaled Washington would ignore Russian objections to its
exit plans.
"The problem is there are Russian INF violations in Europe now," Bolton
told reporters, repeating an allegation Moscow denies.
"The threat is not America's INF withdrawal from the treaty. The threat
is Russian missiles already deployed."
He said Russia had first illegally tested a land-based cruise missile in
2008 and described its violations of the treaty as "long and deep".
Russia in turn accuses Washington of violating the same treaty,
something it denies.
Bolton has said the treaty is outdated because other countries remain
free to make intermediate-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles
while the United States finds its hands tied. He noted that previous
efforts to expand the treaty to include other countries had come to
nothing.
COAT OF ARMS
Putin made an acerbic reference to the U.S. coat of arms at the start of
his meeting with Bolton.
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![](../images/102418PIX/news_w41.jpg)
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) shakes hands with U.S. National
Security Adviser John Bolton during a meeting at the Kremlin in
Moscow, Russia October 23, 2018. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
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"We barely respond to any of your steps but they keep on coming," he
jokily complained to Bolton.
"On the coat of the arms of the United States there's an eagle
holding 13 arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other. My
question is whether your eagle has gobbled up all the olives leaving
only the arrows?"
Bolton quipped that he had not brought any olives.
Before the talks, a Kremlin spokesman said the INF treaty had its
weak points, but that the U.S. approach of talking about leaving it
without proposing a replacement was dangerous.
But Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov, speaking to reporters
after the talks finished, sounded a conciliatory note, saying that
Moscow viewed Bolton's visit as a sign that Washington wanted to
continue dialogue on the issue. He said Moscow wanted the same
thing.
Ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, now 87 and an original signatory
to the treaty, has warned that unraveling the pact could have
catastrophic consequences. Countries such as Poland have, however,
backed Trump's move.
Trump's withdrawal announcement is causing particular concern in
Europe which was the main beneficiary of the INF treaty as a result
of the removal of Pershing and U.S. cruise missiles from Europe and
of Soviet SS-20 missiles from the European part of the then Soviet
Union.
Without the treaty, some European countries fear that Washington
might deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe again and
that Russia might move to deploy such missiles in its exclave of
Kaliningrad which would once again turn Europe into a potential
nuclear battlefield.
Bolton said Washington was "a long way" from making any such
deployments in Europe and said grim warnings about the dangerous
consequences of Washington quitting the treaty were wide of the mark
and reminded him of similarly hollow warnings when the United States
left the Cold War-era Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in 2002.
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"It was not true then and it will not be true now," he said.
(Additional reporting by Christian Lowe, Polina Nikolskaya, Katya
Golubkova and Polina Devitt in Moscow, Paul Carrel and Hans-Edzard
Busemann in Berlin, Joanna Plucinska and Pawel Sobczak in Warsaw,
and by Robin Emmott in Brussels; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing
by Richard Balmforth and Alison Williams)
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