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Demise of US-Russian Nuclear Treaty Triggers Warnings

Charles Maynes

   MOSCOW - In December 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan hosted Soviet
   leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the White House for a ceremony that
   signaled the changing times.

   Reagan, a Cold War hardliner who'd once labeled the U.S.S.R. "the Evil
   Empire," was all smiles as he and Gorbachev sat down to sign the latest
   symbol of growing U.S.-Soviet detente -- the Intermediate-Range Nuclear
   Forces, known as the INF Treaty.

   "It was a momentous occasion," remembers George Shultz, Reagan's
   Secretary of State from 1982-1988 -- and a key figure in crafting the
   INF deal.

   Schulz, now 98 years old and still active as a fellow at Stanford's
   Hoover Institution, credits the INF agreement in large part to a shift
   in Reagan's attitude toward nuclear weapons.