China joins the US and Russia negotiations to develop a multilateral nuclear arms control treaty

But the big news, according to the agency Efelies in the fact that Chinaa country that is not a signatory of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and that in recent years has considerably increased its nuclear arsenalhas also joined the conversations. Beijing, however, had assured that it was not willing to participate in negotiations under the current circumstances.

Sources from the US Department of Justice cited by the agency Reuters indicate that the objective of the contacts is to forge a multilateral nuclear arms control treaty. Donald Trump refused to renew START III, as requested by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putinconsidering it “a bad agreement” outdated.

In the first meeting, “several topics” were addressed, but in particular they talked about how to continue nuclear disarmament efforts after the expiration of the so-called New START or START, which had been in force since 2010 and established a limit on the number of strategic nuclear weapons, with a maximum of 1,550 warheads and 700 ballistic systems on land, sea or air to Washington and Moscow

The meeting in Geneva between Russia and the US is the first that has taken place on this matter after the initial contacts recorded on the last day of START III and was held at the initiative of Washington. At the moment, a new meeting has not been agreed upon, according to the sources cited by Efe.

The White House defends that the new treaty should not only be signed with Russia, but also with China, whom it accused a few days ago of carrying out a secret nuclear test in June 2020 which both Beijing and Moscow have denied.

At a meeting this Monday in Geneva of the Conference on Disarmament, the only forum of governments in which this issue is addressed, the deputy assistant secretary of the United States Office of Arms Control and Nonproliferation, Christopher Yeaw, argued that the Chinese nuclear arsenal could achieve strategic “parity” compared to the American or the Russian within a period of four or five years.

For the US, the absence of China was the “main defect” of START III. Shen Jian, ambassador for Disarmament Affairs, insisted this Monday, in response to Yeaw’s accusations of an “unprecedented, deliberate, rapid and opaque accumulation of nuclear weapons,” that Beijing will not submit to any control because it has always “maintained its nuclear capabilities in the minimum level required for national security“.

Several non-nuclear-weapon countries have asked the Conference on Disarmament to negotiate a new treaty that includes all nuclear countries, such as France and the United Kingdom, as well as India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel, which are not part of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).