Any new nuclear arms talks must include China, Mike Pompeo tells Russia

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told his Russian counterpart on Friday that any future arms control talks must focus on an American proposal for a new arms control accord that includes Russia and China, the State Department said.

Pompeo emphasised in a telephone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that “any future arms control talks must be based on President [Donald] Trump’s vision for a trilateral arms control agreement that includes both Russia and China,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.

China, whose arsenal of an estimated 300 nuclear weapons is far smaller than those of Russia and the United States, has rejected such talks.

Ortagus said Pompeo’s comments came as he and Lavrov discussed “next steps in the bilateral Strategic Security Dialogue, taking into account the Covid-19 pandemic”.

Trump last year proposed that the United States, Russia and China negotiate a new pact to replace the 2010 New Start accord that cut deployed US and Russian nuclear warheads and the bombers and land- and submarine-based missiles that carry them to their lowest levels in decades.