The United States and Russia should engage in immediate negotiations to maintain major nuclear agreements and minimize the threat of nuclear war, the executive director of the US-based Arms Control Association (ACA) Daryl Kimball told Sputnik on Thursday.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 20th December, 2018) The United States and Russia should engage in immediate negotiations to maintain major nuclear agreements and minimize the threat of nuclear war, the executive director of the US-based Arms Control Association (ACA) Daryl Kimball told Sputnik on Thursday.Earlier on Thursday Russian President Vladimir Putin said at his annual press conference that the tendency to underestimate the threat of a nuclear war has been growing, leading to the "very dangerous" trend of lowering the threshold of using nuclear weapons. The Russian president also called "very dangerous" ideas of creating low-yield nuclear weapons and their tactical use, as well of developing ballistic non-nuclear missiles.
"Given the reality that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, President Putin and [US] President [Donald] Trump need to behave like responsible leaders and take action to reduce the risk. Step one is to direct their teams to immediately engage in talks designed to avoid miscalculation and dangerous military incidents, and to preserve key nuclear restraint agreements such as the INF Treaty and New START," Kimball said.
Kimball stressed that in case of use of lower-yield nuclear weapons in a regional conflict there was no guarantee at all that there would not be a nuclear escalation leading to global thermonuclear war.
The ACA executive director went on to say that unfortunately Washington and Moscow were both playing a blame game regarding the INF Treaty.
"The more responsible approach would be to immediately engage in serious discussions on a fix to the INF Treaty, or at least agree to new mutual restraint measures, that prevent the renewal of a missile race in Europe," Kimball added.
The INF Treaty was signed in 1987 between the Soviet Union and the United States. The agreement obligated the parties to destroy their ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles whose ranges are between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (from 311 to 3,317 miles).
In early December US State Secretary Mike Pompeo said the United States would suspend its adherence to the INF Treaty in 60 days unless Russia returned to full compliance with the agreement. Russia has repeatedly denied the allegations that it breached the treaty.
