“We will not use our influence on China as the Americans want,” said a Russian official (Representation).
Moscow:
Russia said on Tuesday that it was “unrealistic” for the United States to insist that China be involved in disarmament talks, one day after Moscow and Washington negotiated their last major nuclear deal.
“The United States has not strayed from its position to include China. For our part, we have explained in detail why we consider it unrealistic to count on China’s participation,” said the vice. – Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabkov, Russian negotiator in the talks. as the RIA Novosti news agency says.
“And we will not use our influence on China as the Americans want it to,” he added.
US President Donald Trump has insisted that China should be involved in talks to extend New START, the treaty that limits US and Russian nuclear warheads, because he says Beijing has had a pass to develop systems of weapons.
And the US envoy to the talks, Marshall Billingslea, insisted on Tuesday that China had “the obligation to negotiate in good faith with us and the Russians”.
Talks on extending the treaty – which expires in February 2021 and limits each party to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads – took place in Vienna on Monday, Billingslea saying they had been “very positive”.
China has shown no interest in participating, and analysts say there is little prospect of an imminent agreement between Russia and the United States.
Shortly before the talks began, Billingslea again raised the question of what he called China’s “no-show” by tweeting a photo of an empty negotiating table adorned with Chinese flags.
China’s mission to Vienna responded by ridiculing the tweet as “performance art”.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
