BERLIN, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Former German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel made a public appeal to the country's federal government on Friday to act decisively in response to the recently announced exit of the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
Gabriel urged Berlin to help banish the threat of an uncontrolled nuclear confrontation. "I already warned more than a year ago when I was still foreign minister that we are in grave danger of entering a new nuclear arms race in Europe," the 59-year-old told the German press agency (dpa).
Related warnings by then foreign minister had been met with little interest in Germany at the time, however, because of then looming federal elections.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday said that Washington would pull out of the INF Treaty on account of Russia's alleged breach of the agreement.
The treaty was signed in 1987 between the Soviet Union and the United States on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.
The deal marked the first-ever pact reached by Washington and Moscow on nuclear disarmament and a major step forward in restricting the arms race.
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday denied U.S. allegations that Washington was abandoning the INF Treaty due to violations by Moscow.
"We reiterate that Russia is strictly observing the clauses of the treaty," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing.
Gabriel has launched a "no arms race" initiative with his fellow Social Democratic Party (SDP) members to preserve the achievements of the nuclear non-proliferation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. The ex-foreign minister said he was "appalled" to see dangerous re-armament spreading across the world again and that the time had come to "stand up and stop this."
Martin Schulz, the ex-SDP leader and former president of the European Parliament, joined Gabriel's initiative and offered similar criticism of Trump's conduct on Friday. Schulz complained about what he described as a one-sided focus on frequent U.S. demands for Berlin to raise its military expenditure in public debate and called for the launch of new non-proliferation initiatives.
