##U.S. accuses Russia of violating 1987 arms treaty by testing cruise missile##
The United States has found that Russia violated a 1987 arms control
treaty by testing a ground-launched cruise missile, a senior US official
said late Monday, calling the matter “very serious.”
The finding comes in a 2014 report that concluded Russia was in
violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which barred
it from possessing, producing or flight-testing such cruise missiles
with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers, the official told AFP.
President Barack Obama has sent a letter to his counterpart Vladimir
Putin on the subject, which the administration official described as “a
very serious matter which we have attempted to address with Russia for
some time now.”
Washington was prepared to discuss its determination with Moscow “immediately” in
senior-level bilateral talks, the official added, saying Congress and US
allies have been kept abreast of the matter.
“The United States is committed to the viability of the INF Treaty,”
the official said. “We encourage Russia to return to compliance with its
obligations under the treaty and to eliminate any prohibited items in a
verifiable manner.”
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), signed by then US
president Ronald Reagan and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev,
eliminated nuclear and conventional intermediate range ground-launched
ballistic and cruise missiles.
The announcement of the determination, first reported by The New York
Times, comes as a time of heightened tensions between Washington and
the Kremlin over Ukraine.
The official said the INF treaty served the “mutual interests of the
parties” — not only the United States and Russia but also 11 other
successor states of the Soviet Union.
“Moreover, this treaty contributes to the security of our allies and
to regional security in Europe and in the Far East,” the official added.
In January, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Washington
had raised concerns with Moscow following a Times report that it had
begun testing a new ground-launched cruise missile as early as 2008, and
that the State Department’s senior arms control official had repeatedly
raised the issue with Moscow since May 2013.
Psaki said at the time she could not refute the details of the Times
report, and that there was an ongoing interagency review to determine
whether the Russians had violated the terms of a US-Russian arms control
pact.