Several European foreign ministers expressed concern on Friday about the U.S. possible withdrawal from a 10-year-old nuclear missile treaty with Russia.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by Washington and Moscow in 1987, bans nuclear missiles with a range of 500km to 5,000km.
It has since formed the basis of Europe’s security architecture.
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But the U.S. accuses Russia of breaching the treaty by developing its 9M729 ground-launched missiles.
A 60-day deadline set by Washington for Moscow to destroy the missiles expires on February 2, with a U.S. announcement already expected on Friday. Russia has denied the accusations.
“Without the INF Treaty, there will be less security,’’ German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in Bucharest, where he was attending a meeting with his EU counterparts.
He noted that Russia’s breaches had effectively nullified the pact.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto urged both sides to cooperate, noting that his country had learned a clear lesson from history: “Whenever there was a conflict between East and West, we central Europeans always lost.’’
His Belgian counterpart, Didier Reynders, argued that withdrawing from the treaty was not the right approach.
“It is not by exiting the multilateral framework that one will succeed in having more pressure or more efficiency in the fight against non-proliferation,’’ Reynders said.
Many in Europe fear that the U.S. withdrawal would trigger a discussion about nuclear rearmament.
Maas cautioned against such talks, however.
“Europe is no longer divided as during the times of the Iron Curtain, and that is why all answers from those times are totally unsuited to respond to the challenges we are dealing with now,’’ he said. (NAN)
