NATO: No Breakthroughs in INF Talks With Russia

NATO and Russia did not make any breakthroughs on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in talks at the alliance headquarters, NATO’s secretary-general said.”We did not see any sign of Russia being willing to come back into compliance with the INF treaty,” Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Friday in Brussels after a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council. Stoltenberg said the chances of a resolution on a landmark Cold War arms treaty were “going down, day by day” but that NATO had not given up on its efforts to try to persuade Moscow to destroy the SSC-8 land-based cruise missile with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,400 miles).Moscow says it is fully in compliance with the INF treaty negotiated by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which eliminated the medium-range missile arsenals of the two countries.The United States is set to pull out of the treaty on August 2, arguing that it needs to develop its own warheads to deter Moscow, after Russia’s last-minute decision not to destroy the medium-range missile that NATO says violates the INF.
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