US State Department Rejects Convening INF Compliance Commission

Convening the Special Verification Committee (SVC) to resolve violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) would be a futile endeavor without the United States and Russia first engaging in bilateral talks, US State Department Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance spokesperson Blake Narendra told Sputnik on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Some US analysts have suggested that the United States should convene a meeting of the SVC, which was established by the INF Treaty to resolve compliance questions, according to a Congressional Research Service (CSR) report published earlier this month.

"In the current climate, our [US] assessment has been that initially a bilateral approach could be more productive," Narendra said about the possibility of holding a US-Russian committee meeting to resolve INF violations. "We [the United States] could revise our thinking at some point."

The United States and Russia signed the INF Treaty in 1987 to ban deploying additional nuclear and conventional ground-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 500-5,500 kilometers (300-3,400 miles).

Washington has accused Moscow of not complying with the INF Treaty as Russia recently tested an unarmed ground-launched cruise missile.

Russia has dismissed the US accusations and expressed concern over the establishment of a US-designed ballistic missile defense system in Europe in violation of the INF Treaty. Poland, Romania, Spain and Turkey had agreed to deploy elements of the missile defense system on their territories.

Moreover, German media reported the United States would station 20 next-generation nuclear weapons at the Buechel military air base in western Germany — information obtained from a line item included in the 2015 US budget.

Russian Federation Council’s Defense and Security Committee Chairman Viktor Ozerov said earlier that Moscow could drop out of a Soviet-era nuclear treaty with Washington if the United States moved the upgraded B61-12 nuclear bombs to Germany.