(Bloomberg) -- Russia lashed out at the U.S. for its insistence that China join talks on salvaging a key nuclear arms pact before it expires next February, accusing Washington of seeking a pretext to “bury” the agreement.
But Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova welcomed President Donald Trump's reported decision to withdraw more than a quarter of U.S. troops from Germany, calling the large military presence a “vestige of the Cold War.”
She had harsher words for the administration's arms control plans. “This is all smacks of an effort by the U.S. to bury the pact while saving face and laying the blame on Russia and China,” she told a weekly briefing in Moscow on Thursday.
The U.S. and Russia are sending senior officials to Vienna on June 22 for a new round of arms-control talks. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump contends Moscow should help bring China into future negotiations to limit all three countries' nuclear weapons stockpiles. China has refused. Russia is arguing that it would be better to concentrate first on extending the U.S.-Russia New START treaty for five years as permitted under the 2010 agreement.
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