The United States would like Beijing to join the statement on the inadmissibility of nuclear war, similar to the one adopted in 1985 by the USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan, in addition to Moscow and Washington. This was stated by U.S. Ambassador to Moscow John Sullivan in an interview with the newspaper Kommersant, published on Sunday.
“The U.S. authorities and President Donald Trump personally believe that such topics require a multifaceted approach”, – he said, answering the relevant question. – “And we see that this approach is justified by the recent joint statement by the permanent members of the UN Security Council on the 50th anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.”
Sullivan noted that the joint statement of the leaders of the USSR and the United States Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan on the inadmissibility of nuclear war was signed very long ago and since then the situation in the world has changed.
“We believe that a multilateral statement, including one with the participation of China, would better meet today’s requirements, rather than just repeat what the U.S. and the USSR did many years ago”, – he said.
The US ambassador added that the UK and France, which possess nuclear arsenals, could also be involved in negotiations on this issue, but China’s participation is more important for the US. “We hope that Beijing will see the benefits of the agreements with Washington and Moscow within a triangle of three key nuclear powers to outline the arms control framework for the coming decade,” he added.
The joint statement that a nuclear war cannot be fought because there will be no winners was adopted in 1985 by Gorbachev and Reagan. In late 2018, Russia offered the U.S. to confirm this statement, but never received a response.