United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres hopes the Russia and the United States will use the six-month period to resolve their differences over the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric said on Friday.

"We have seen the announcement they made today. The Secretary General hopes that the parties will use this six months to resolve their differences. The INF is a very important part of arms control architecture," he told a briefing.

US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said earlier on Friday that starting from February 2 Washington was suspending its liabilities under the INF Treaty and would quit it in six months if Russia fails to comply with its demands.

Situation around INF Treaty

The INF, or The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, Treaty was signed between the former Soviet Union and the United States on December 8, 1987 and entered into force on June 1, 1988. In 1992, following the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the treaty was multilateralized with the former Soviet republics - Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine - as successors. The INF Treaty covered deployed and non-deployed ground-based short-range missiles (from 500 to 1,000 kilometers) and intermediate-range missiles (from 1,000 to 5,500 kilometers).

The US accused Russia of violating the treaty for the first time in July 2014. Since then, Washington has been repeating its claims on many occasions, while Moscow has been rejecting them and advancing counter-claims concerning the implementation of the treaty by the US side.

US President Donald Trump said on October 20 that Washington would withdraw from the INF Treaty because Russia was violating the terms of the agreement.

US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said on December 4 that his country would stop fulfilling its liabilities under the INF Treaty unless Russia returned to "full and verifiable" compliance with it within 60 days. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on the following day that the US side had provided no evidence to prove Russia’s alleged violations of the treaty. He stressed that Russia is against dismantling this treaty but will have to react correspondingly if the United States withdraws from it.