German Foreign Minister Haikou Mas proposed a review of the arms control system and the disarmament process to maintain peace in Europe.
He told Der Spiegel magazine that abandoning the medium- and short-range missile reduction treaty would remove one of the biggest achievements in disarmament, adding that Germany, in cooperation with its European partners, would support its preservation.
"We must review the policy of arms control and disarmament, if we want to maintain peace in Europe," he said.
In his view, Mas mentioned four items on which international security must be based, including the return to the US-Europe-Russia information exchange policy, the priority of common interests to "mutual mistrust", comprehensive supervision of missile information, including winging, Transparency in arms control issues.
At the same time, the German minister pointed to the need to take into account the existence of new technologies in the development of weapons, because what appeared to be a scientific imagination in the past, may become in the near future "a deadly fact," he said.
"We will work hard and firmly in favor of disarmament and arms control, and the global arms race can only be stopped in this way," he said.
The last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, and US President Ronald Reagan signed in December 1987 an unlimited treaty to curb medium- and short-range missiles. Last October, US President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of the United States from the treaty.
