DONALD TRUMP has confirmed the U.S. will leave an arms control treaty with Russia dating from the cold war that has kept nuclear missiles out of Europe for three decades.

“We’ll have to develop those weapons,” the U.S. president told reporters in Nevada after a rally. “We’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out.”

Trump was referring to the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF), which banned ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500km to 5,500km.

Signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, it led to nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles being eliminated, and an end to a dangerous standoff between US Pershing and cruise missiles and Soviet SS-20 missiles in Europe.

The Guardian reported Friday that Trump’s third national security adviser, John Bolton, a longstanding opponent of arms control treaties, was pushing for US withdrawal.

The U.S. says Russia has been violating the INF agreement with the development and deployment of a new cruise missile. Under the terms of the treaty, it would take six months for U.S. withdrawal to take effect.

“This is the most severe crisis in nuclear arms control since the 1980s,” said Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute. Washington’s withdrawal from the treaty will become a major blow to the global system of strategic stability, a Russian lawmaker said yesterday.

“In case of U.S. exit, a powerful blow will be delivered to the whole system of strategic stability in the world,” Alexey Pushkov, head of the Russian Federation Council’s temporary commission on informational policy and communication, wrote on his Twitter microblog.

(SD-Agencies)