Treaty exits and extensions top Trump adviser’s Moscow talks

MOSCOW (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser met in Moscow with top Russian officials Monday, less than 48 hours after Trump declared he intended to pull the United States out of a 1987 nuclear weapons treaty.

National Security Adviser John Bolton and his Russian counterpart, Security Council chairman Nikolai Patrushev, discussed arms control agreements, Syria, Iran, North Korea and the fight against terrorism, according to the Security Council.

During the talks, Patrushev emphasized the importance of maintaining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the Security Council said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.

Trump said that Russia violated the treaty that prohibits the U.S. and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying groundlaunched nuclear cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles.

He warned Saturday that the U.S. will begin developing such weapons unless Russia and China agree not to possess or develop them.

China wasn’t a party to the pact that was signed in 1987 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

“Russia has not adhered to the agreement,” Trump said Monday. “We have more money than anybody else by far, we’ll build it up until they come to their senses.”

“I’m terminating the agreement because they violated the agreement,” Trump said, adding that his action was “a threat to whoever you want, and it includes China, and it includes Russia and it includes anybody else that wants to play that game.”

Bolton noted in an interview with the Russian business daily Kommersant that the U.S. was concerned both with Russia’s violation of the pact and China’s intermediate-range missile capabilities.

He also added that it would be unrealistic to expect Beijing to accept any limits.