The United Kingdom has defended US President Donald Trump’s decision to drop out of a decades-long agreement with Russia to control proliferation of nuclear weapons, accusing Moscow of violating the deal.
British Defense Minister Gavin Williamson said while he wanted the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty to stay in place, Trump had made the right call.
“Our close and long-term ally of course is the United States and we will be absolutely resolute with the United States in hammering home a clear message that Russia needs to respect the treaty obligation that it signed,” he told the Financial Times on Sunday.
Trump announced Saturday that he was pulling out of the deal because it kept Washington from developing new nuclear weapons while Moscow was free to “do weapons (while) we’re not allowed to.”
“We’ll have to develop those weapons,” he then vowed.
The INF, which was signed in 1986 between then US…