Trump's carrot for Moscow

Traditional Russian wooden nesting dolls, Matryoshka dolls, depicting US President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, at a gift shop in Moscow on Monday. Pic/AFP

London: US President-elect Donald Trump will propose offering to end sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea in return for a nuclear arms reduction deal with Moscow, he told The Times of London.

Criticising previous US foreign policy in an interview published yesterday, he described the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as possibly the gravest error in the history of the United States and akin to "throwing rocks into a beehive".

But Trump, who will be inaugurated on Friday as the 45th US president, raised the prospect of the first big nuclear arms control agreement with Moscow since the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed by President Obama in 2010.

"They have sanctions on Russia; let's see if we can make some good deals with Russia," the president-elect was quoted as saying.

"For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that's part of it. But Russia's hurting very badly right now because of sanctions, but I think something can happen that a lot of people are gonna benefit."

‘Too early to react to Trump's offer'
The Kremlin said yesterday it was too early to comment on Trump's proposal to do a deal with Moscow on nuclear arms cuts in exchange for Washington lifting sanctions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would wait until Trump took office before commenting. There were currently no talks on possible nuclear arms cuts with the US, and Russia did not intend to raise the sanctions issue itself in negotiations with foreign countries, said Peskov.

German carmakers face 35% US import tariff
Trump has warned German car companies that he would impose a border tax of 35 per cent on vehicles imported to the US market, a plan that drew sharp rebukes from Berlin and hit automakers' shares. In an interview with German newspaper Bild, published yesterday, Trump criticised German carmakers BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen for failing to produce more cars on US soil.

1,367
Number of nuclear warheads United States has

1,796
Number of nuclear warheads Russia has