Gorbachev, last Soviet leader, wants Trump-Putin summit to save arms pact

MOSCOW – Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, said on Thursday a landmark arms control treaty that helped end the Cold War was in peril and called for a summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to save it.

Gorbachev, 86, said US-Russia relations were in the throes of a "severe crisis" and that the treaty, which banned all Soviet and American short and intermediate-range land-based nuclear and conventional missiles, was now at serious risk.

Gorbachev signed the pact—the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty—in 1987 along with then US President Ronald Reagan in Washington. Russia, after the 1991 Soviet collapse, took on its obligations.

Both sides have accused each other of violating the treaty in recent months however, stoking fears it might break down as US-Russia ties continue to deteriorate amid allegations that Moscow interfered with the 2016 US presidential election, something Russia flatly denies.