The United States and the Soviet Union held arduous talks on the reduction of Intermediate Nuclear Forces(INF)in the later period of the Cold War.At the initial stage of the negotiations,the US proposed that the relevant reduc-tions must be based on a global perspective.However,as the two sides focused more on the INF issue in Europe and were ex-tremely divided in their opinions,the progress of Asian INF negotiations was behind schedule for years.When Mikhail Gor-bachev came to power,he called for a complete elimination of nuclear weapons by 2000,but tried to geographically limit the scope to Europe.In the face of the disarmament offensive from Soviet Union,the US,in order to maintain its initiative in the negotiations,shifted to place more emphasis on the necessity of cutting nuclear weapons in Asia.The US counter-proposal pushed the Soviet Union to change their original stance.At the Reykjavik Summit,the two countries reached a preliminary in-terim agreement to retain 100 warheads each outside Europe.With the U S proposal getting support from more countries,and with the consideration of eliminating the entire category of SRINF in Europe,the Soviet Union finally accepted the"Global Double Zero Option".
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