Trump administration gives Russia 60 days to comply with INF treaty, or the U.S. will move to withdr [View all]

[octoberlib]

BRUSSELS — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday that Russia is in material breach of a Cold War-era arms control agreement and that the United States would begin the process of leaving the accord in 60 days if Moscow doesn’t come into compliance.

The ultimatum, issued at a meeting at alliance headquarters in Brussels, amounts to a softening of the Trump administration’s position after President Trump abruptly announced in October that he had decided to “terminate the agreement.”

The termination plan was set to go into effect Tuesday, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders persuaded the president to delay the move to allow for additional consultations with allies and to try to pressure the Kremlin one last time to comply with the treaty, according to diplomats and officials familiar with the discussions.Merkel’s last-ditch effort, which she advanced in a meeting with Trump in Buenos Aires on Saturday, came up against a determined drive by the president’s national security adviser John Bolton to withdraw from the landmark accord.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987, banned nuclear and nonnuclear missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometers, or about 310 to 3,400 miles. It has been a pillar of Europe’s security architecture for more than three decades, but the Trump administration has said it puts the United States at a military disadvantage against China, which is not bound by the treaty.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/trump-administration-gives-russia-60-days-to-comply-with-inf-treaty-or-the-us-will-move-to-withdraw/2018/12/04/64c5bec2-f74a-11e8-8642-c9718a256cbd_story.html?utm_term=.9d1c2ab080b0