China said on Thursday it would not join nuclear talks \u201cat this stage\u201d after the expiry of the US-Russian New START treaty triggered fears of a global arms race.<\/p>\n
Campaigners have warned that the expiry of the New START treaty on Thursday, which ended decades of restrictions on how many warheads the two powers deploy, could encourage China to expand its own arsenal.<\/p>\n
The United States has said any new nuclear agreement would have to include China, but international efforts to encourage Beijing to join fresh talks have so far failed.<\/p>\n
\u201cChina has always maintained that the advancement of arms control and disarmament must adhere to the principles of maintaining global strategic stability,\u201d Beijing foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told a news conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cChina\u2019s nuclear capabilities are of a totally different scale as those of the United States and Russia (and) will not participate in nuclear disarmament negotiations at this stage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The New START treaty ended at the turn of the calendar on February 5, after US President Donald Trump did not follow up on Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin\u2019s proposal to extend warhead limits in the agreement for one year.<\/p>\n
Russia and the United States together control more than 80 percent of the world\u2019s nuclear warheads but arms agreements have been withering away.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s nuclear arsenal is growing quickly, with an estimated 550 strategic nuclear launchers, which is still well below the 800 each at which Russia and the United States were capped under New START.<\/p>\n
New START, first signed in 2010, limited each side\u2019s nuclear arsenal to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads \u2014 a reduction of nearly 30 percent from the previous limit set in 2002.<\/p>\n
It also allowed each side to conduct on-site inspections of the other\u2019s nuclear arsenal, although these were suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic and have not resumed since.<\/p>\n
AFP
\nThe post China says not joining nuclear talks yet as US-Russia treaty expires appeared first on Vanguard News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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