UN, October 22. /TASS/. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres hopes that the United States and Russia will come to accords settling recently emerged disputes concerning the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Farhan Haq, a spokesman for the UN chief, said on Monday.
"The Secretary General is aware of the US comments regarding the INF Treaty and he still hopes that the two countries will be able to solve the disagreements," Haq told journalists.
On Saturday, US President Donald Trump said that Washington would withdraw from the INF Treaty because Russia, in his opinion, was violating the terms of the agreement. At the same time, he did not rule out signing a new agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces with Moscow and Beijing if Russia and China provide guarantees of halting the development of such weapons.
The Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing a high-placed official from the US administration that the United States was also considering the option of revising the New START Treaty.
New INF Treaty
The INF Treaty was concluded in Washington on December 8, 1987 and took effect on June 1, 1988. In 1992, in the wake of the Soviet Union’s breakup, the treaty turned multilateral. Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine joined the United States and Russia as co-signatories (until the full elimination of their own missiles of the relevant class).
The INF Treaty eliminated operational and non-operational medium range (1,000-5,500 kilometers) and shorter range (500-1,000 kilometers) ground-launched missiles. The Soviet Union eliminated 1,846 missiles, and the United States, 846.
The United States accused Russia of violating the INF Treaty for the first time in July 2014. Since then, Washington has been repeating these accusations while Moscow has been categorically rejecting them. On July 8, 2017, an initiative was submitted with the US Congress to impose sanctions on Russia for violating the INF Treaty.