Sir Nicholas Soames: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions he has had with the US Administration on their recent decision to suspend the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Sir Alan Duncan, Minister of State for Europe and the Americas at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office: We have been discussing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with the US for a number of years as part of our continuous dialogue on security issues. The US also initiated a series of meetings on INF with close Allies in 2017 and 2018, during which we discussed the US approach and exchanged detailed information on the Russian violation and how we might best achieve our shared policy objectives.

We support the US decision to suspend its participation in the INF Treaty and start the treaty’s formal withdrawal process. A situation where the US was respecting INF Treaty and Russia was not, was not sustainable.

Hansard

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