FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Putin To Discuss a New START and INF Treaty with Trump
Nov. 15, 2018 (EIRNS)—Speaking to reporters in Singapore, where he was attending the 33rd ASEAN summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that among the key issues on the agenda of the Russia-U.S. summit will be the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty which President Donald Trump wants to leave, TASS reported today.
“One of key issues, certainly, is strategic stability,” Putin told reporters speaking about possible topics at his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump at the G20 summit in Argentina in late November. “We should understand what will become of the New START Treaty and the INF Treaty, and how events will develop here,” Putin explained, TASS reported.
The INF Treaty was signed on Dec. 8, 1987 and took effect on June 1, 1988. It outlawed deployed and non-deployed intermediate range (1,000-5,000 km) and shorter-range (500-1,000 km) ground-based missiles. The New START Treaty, which was signed on April 8, 2010, and entered into force in 2011, stipulates that seven years after its entry into effect, each party should have no more than a total of 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and strategic bombers, as well as no more than 1,550 warheads on deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs and strategic bombers, and a total of 800 deployed and non-deployed missile launchers, wrote TASS.
Putin said he spoke today with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on the sidelines of the East Asia summit in Singapore, touching on arms control and other issues, the Kremlin reported today.