Russia: U.S. May Be Aiming to Quit Nuclear Treaty

Date: 30 July 2019 - 21:58

News ID: ۶۸۷۵۵

GENEVA (Dispatches) – The United States may be planning to blame Russian non-compliance as a pretext to pull out of the Comprehensive nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), a Russian diplomat told the Conference on Disarmament, the world’s main arms talks forum, on Tuesday.
"It would appear that through propaganda around false claims about Russia’s compliance there are attempts to prepare international opinion for a U.S. exit from the CTBT and then to blame Russia again for everything,” the Russian diplomat said.
The United States has signed but not ratified the CTBT.
Russia has in the past categorically dismissed a claim by the United States that Moscow may be conducting nuclear tests in violation of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).
The CTBT, which bans nuclear weapons testing anywhere in the world, was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1996. The multilateral treaty sets out nuclear disarmament as a principle.
Russia ratified the treaty in 2008 but the U.S. has yet to do so.
The US allegations were made amid growing tensions between Washington and Moscow.
US President Donald Trump suspended a bilateral pact with Russia — the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) — in February and threatened full withdrawal in six months. His Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, signed a decree in response, suspending Moscow’s participation in the nuclear arms treaty.
Under the treaty, both sides had been banned from creating ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500 kilometers to 5,500 kilometers. The pact also led to the elimination of nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles.
Following the US move to suspend its obligations under the treaty, Russia warned that the collapse of the agreement would spark an arms race.
Putin, however, said Moscow would not deploy any new missiles unless Washington did so.