U.S., Russia at odds on pact
National security adviser John Bolton holds firm on Trump’s withdrawal from the arms control treaty.
MOSCOW — President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet next month in France, White House national security adviser John Bolton said Tuesday.
The two leaders will con fer on the sidelines of ceremonies in Paris marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, Bolton said. He spoke in Moscow, where he met with Putin and senior Russian officials including the foreign and defense ministers, and served notice that the United States will withdraw from a landmark Reagan-era arms control treaty.
Bolton said the United States would present “in due course” an official notice on leaving the treaty. He also echoed Trump’s assertions that Russia is violating the pact, suggesting that no progress was made to ease the impasse during Bolton’s two days of talks with top Russian officials.
The Trump-Putin meeting, expected to be short, will be the two leaders’ first since a lengthier stand-alone summit in July. That session, in Helsinki, brought extensive criticism for Trump’s apparent willingness to accept at face value Putin’s denial that Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.
Both Trump and Putin also are expected to attend the Group of 20 economic gathering later in November, in Argentina, and a short meeting between the two had been contemplated there.
In July, the White House had issued a statement from Bolton saying: “The president believes that the next bilateral meeting with President Putin should take place after the Russia witch hunt is over, so we’ve agreed that it will be after the first of the year.”
“Witch hunt” is a preferred term by Trump for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion between the Kremlin and his 2016 presidential campaign, which is expected to continue past the midterm elections.
Trump also has extended an invitation to Putin to visit Washington, D.C., which administration officials said could yield a second full summit next year.
U.S. officials have said the purpose of continued meetings is to find areas of common ground, reduce tensions, including over the war in Syria, and urge Russia to help enforce international sanctions on North Korea and Iran.
Bolton’s comments about the arms control agreement seemed sure to disappoint Germany and other allies in Europe that have urged Washington to work to overcome disputes with Russia rather than walking away from the treaty entirely.
The Kremlin denies any violations and says scrapping the 31-year-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF, would be a dangerous development that could spark a new arms race.
“The American position is that Russia is in violation,” Bolton said at a news conference. “Russia’s position is that they are not in violation. So one has to ask how to ask the Russians to come back into compliance with something they don’t think they’re violating.”
President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty in 1987, leading to the elimination of an entire category of nuclear missiles and the removal of more than 2,500 of them from installations across Europe.
Since the Obama administration, U.S. officials have said Russia’s development of a ground-launched missile is skirting INF rules.
In a bit of dark humor, Putin referred to Washington’s announced withdrawal from the INF and then quipped about the balance between peace and force represented by the Great Seal of the United States.
“As far as I can remember, the U.S. seal depicts an eagle on one side holding 13 arrows and on the other side an olive branch with 13 olives,” Putin said, sitting across from Bolton at talks before the news conference. “Here’s the question: Did your eagle already eat all the olives and only the arrows are left?”
“Hopefully I’ll have some answers for you,” Bolton replied. “But I didn’t bring any more olives.”
“That’s what I thought,” Putin said, provoking laughter from Bolton.
Bolton’s mission waded deep into the frictions between Washington and Moscow, while leaving open the question of what, if any, arms-control architecture the Trump administration envisions for the future.
Bolton described the Cold War-era treaty as outdated because it does not include other nuclear powers, including China. But he suggested it was unrealistic to include other countries in a broader version of the INF Treaty, saying that such efforts had failed in the past.