US President Donald Trump confirms US will pull out of nuclear arms pact with Russia

US President Donald Trump has announced he will pull the United States out of a Cold War-era nuclear weapons deal with Russia. The president has accused Russia of violating the 1987 pact, but provided no further details.

The United States will withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, President Donald Trump announced Saturday, dw.de reports.

Trump justified the move by accusing Moscow of violating the 1987 nuclear arms pact, but refused to provide further details.

“[Russia] has been violating it for many years. I don’t know why President Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out,” the president said following a campaign stop in Elko, Nevada. “We’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons [while] we’re not allowed to. We are going to terminate the agreement and then we are going to develop the weapons.”

Trump went on to indicate that he would reconsider, provided Russia and China agreed to sign up to a fresh nuclear deal. China is party to the current pact.

“We’ll have to develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and say let’s really get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons, but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it, and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable,” Trump said.

The landmark agreement, signed by then-leaders Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, prohibits the US and Russia from possessing, producing or testing ground-launched cruise missiles with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles (500 to 5,500 kilometers).

Russia has responded to Washington’s impending withdrawal from the arms treaty by accusing it of striving to become the world’s only superpower.

“The main motive is a dream of a unipolar world. Will it come true? No,” Moscow’s state-run news agency RIA Novosti quoted a foreign ministry official as saying. “This decision is part of the US policy course to withdraw from those international legal agreements that place equal responsibilities on it and its partners and make vulnerable its concept of its own ‘exceptionalism.'”