WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) – US President Donald Trump is calm about the imminent expiry of the New Start disarmament treaty. “If it expires, it expires,” he said in an interview with the New York Times. The 2010 nuclear disarmament treaty between the United States and Russia expires next month.
“We’re just going to make a better deal,” he said. According to the newspaper, Trump insisted in the conversation that China would be included in a future agreement.
Trump had already been asked about the contract last month. When a reporter pointed out that Russia had said it was impossible to renegotiate the disarmament treaty in time before it expired, he replied that he had been told otherwise. The contract provides for a reduction in nuclear warheads and delivery systems and was last extended for five years in 2021.
Trump also said last month that he had spoken to China and Russia about nuclear disarmament. “I’ve talked to China about it. I’ve talked to Russia about it. And I think that’s something we’d like to do, and they’d like to do it too, and I think Russia would like to do it,” Trump said at a meeting at the White House. However, he did not become more specific./fsp/DP/men