‘Free to test new weapon’

THE US plans to test a new missile in coming weeks would have been prohibited under a landmark, 32-year-old arms control treaty that the US and Russia ripped up yesterday.

Washington and Moscow walked out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty that President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed in 1987,

“Russia is solely responsible for the treaty’s demise,” US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said yesterday.

Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said members of the 29-nation alliance “regret that Russia showed no willingness and took no steps to comply with its international obligations”.

But the US also sees an upside to exiting the treaty. Washington has complained for years that the arms control playing field was uneven.

US officials argued not only was Russia violating the treaty and developing prohibited weapons, but that China also was making similar non-compliant weapons, leaving the US alone in complying with the ageing arms control pact.

Now, the US was free to develop weapons systems that were previously banned.

The US is planning a test flight of such a weapon, according to a senior administration official, who was not authorised to publicly discuss the weapons development and spoke only on condition of anonymity. | AP ANA