Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has urged the Russian and U.S. leaders to resolve a dispute over a nuclear arms control treaty he signed with Washington 30 years ago, warning that a breakdown of the landmark pact could lead the entire international disarmament framework to "collapse."
"Now the task of preserving disarmament agreements is one of the most important," said Gorbachev, 86, who signed the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles, known as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF treaty), with then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan in December 1987, in a move that led to the end of the Cold War.
The 1990 Nobel Peace Prize laureate made the remarks in a recent written interview with Kyodo News as tensions between Russia and the United States run high, with the two nuclear superpowers accusing each other of violating the INF treaty. The landmark pact calls for the destruction of ground-based intermediate and shorter-range nuclear missiles with a range capability of 500 km to 5,500 km.