FORT LAUDERDALE — A survivor of the Parkland school shooting called out US President Donald J. Trump on Saturday over his ties to the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), as several thousand rallied in Florida to demand urgent action on gun control.

Three days after a troubled teen armed with an assault rifle killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, 18-year-old Emma Gonzalez delivered a fiery address to a crowd of students, parents and residents in nearby Ft. Lauderdale.

“To every politician taking donations from the NRA, shame on you!” she thundered, assailing Mr. Trump over the multimillion-dollar support his campaign received from the gun lobby. The crowd chanted in turn: “Shame on you!”

“We are going to be the last mass shooting… We are going to change the law,” she vowed — slamming the fact 19-year-old gunman Nikolas Cruz was able to legally buy a semi-automatic firearm despite a history of troubling and violent behavior.

“The question on whether or not people should be allowed to own an automatic weapon is not a political one. It is question of life or death and it needs to stop being a question of politics,” Ms. Gonzalez told AFP following her speech.

In Washington, the political response has made clear that the powerful NRA pro-gun lobby remains formidable, while Mr. Trump himself suggested the root cause of mass shootings was a crisis of mental health — making no mention of gun control.

“If the president wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and… how nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association,” Ms. Gonzalez said in her impassioned address.

“It doesn’t matter because I already know. Thirty million,” she said, citing the sum spent by the NRA to support Ms. Trump’s election bid and defeat Hillary Clinton.

She then ran through a list of the pro-gun lobby’s talking points — for example, that “a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun,” that no law could ever stop a madman intent on killing — answering each argument with “We call BS.”

The young woman’s powerful address immediately went viral, with her name a top trending topic on Twitter.

Mr. Trump tweeted a day after the massacre that neighbors and fellow students had failed to flag Cruz to the authorities.

“We did,” Mr. Gonzalez fired back, her voice shaking with emotion as she insisted the community had done its best to raise the alarm. “Time and time again. Since he was in middle school. It was no surprise to anyone who knew him to hear that he was the shooter.”

MISSED WARNINGS
US authorities have come under mounting scrutiny for failing to act on a series of warning signs.

The FBI admitted Friday it received a chilling warning in January from a tipster who said Mr. Cruz could be planning a mass shooting, but that agents failed to follow up.

Mr. Cruz was also known to local police after his mother repeatedly reported him for violent outbursts, while records obtained by the South Florida Sun Sentinel show authorities investigated Mr. Cruz in 2016 after he cut his arms on messaging app Snapchat and threatened to buy a gun.

The newspaper, citing Department of Children and Family Services documents, said the investigation came four days after Mr. Cruz turned 18 — legally an adult, and thus able to buy a firearm.

Investigators said there were “some implications” for the teen’s safety, but concluded that his “final level of risk is low as (he) resides with his mother, attends school and receives counseling” as an outpatient at a mental health center, the Sun Sentinel said.

Mr. Cruz later passed a background check, allowing him in February 2017 to buy the AR-15 rifle used in the massacre.

Mr. Trump spoke by phone Saturday with the Parkland mayor, the county commissioner and the principal of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to express his condolences and offer his support.

He then turned political in a tweet Saturday night, asking “why didn’t the Democrats pass gun control legislation when they had both the House and Senate during the Obama Administration. Because they didn’t want to, and now they just talk!”

Mr. Trump is staunchly opposed to additional restrictions on guns or gun ownership, but Vice-President Mike Pence said at an event in Dallas the president would make school safety “a top priority” when he meets with governors of US states in the coming days.

“Let’s pray for wisdom. For all in positions of authority that we might find a way to come together as a nation to confront and end this evil in our time once and for all,” Mr. Pence said. — AFP

MUNICH — As tensions escalate between Russia and the US, the nuclear-armed former Cold War rivals are risking the future of decades-old arms control agreements that have helped to keep a strategic balance and prevent the risk of accidental war.

The conflict played out at a global security conference in Germany where Russia aired grievances about the US and the Trump administration said a new nuclear doctrine unveiled this month doesn’t increase risks. Germany, caught in between, was among European countries voicing concern as both big powers modernize their nuclear arsenals.

US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster defended the US nuclear posture, which envisages building more low-yield bombs, and renewed accusations that Russia is violating a 1987 treaty that bans the deployment of intermediate-range missiles on land.

“We will not allow Russia any of the power to hold the populations of Europe hostage,” he said Saturday in Munich, appearing on stage moments after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov listed a litany of complaints about US-led military expansion since the collapse of Communism.

SYRIA CLASH
Efforts to bridge the divide are stymied by a poisoned atmosphere as the US responds to alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential vote, with 13 Russians indicted Friday including a businessman close to President Vladimir Putin. The two powers are also clashing in Syria, where US strikes killed more than 200 Russian mercenaries who attacked American-backed forces Feb. 7, according to people familiar with the matter.

“In the US, the animus is so tremendous that punishing Russia is the thing to do,” Dmitri Trenin, head of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said in an interview. “I see the demise of the entire arms control regime.”

While the two countries have fulfilled the terms of another landmark nuclear weapons reduction treaty, New START, that accord expires in 2021 and there’s political pressure on President Donald J. Trump to let it expire because of the alleged Russian noncompliance with the INF treaty. Moscow in turn accuses Washington of itself breaking the intermediate-range pact. So far, no formal negotiations are taking place on either issue.

Javier Solana, a Spaniard who served as North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) secretary-general, and Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s acting foreign minister, expressed alarm.

“The most likely theater for nuclear conflicts would once again be here, in the center of Europe,” Mr. Gabriel told the conference.

Graham Allison, a Pentagon adviser under former US President Ronald Reagan when the two superpowers were negotiating arms control, said he’s skeptical momentum will be found to revive START and the INF.

Arms control was developed primarily to prevent the “insane” possibility that Russia and the US would annihilate each other due to miscalculation or accident, despite not even wanting to go to war, said Mr. Allison, now a professor of government at Harvard University. “Those risks remain today.”

That’s something the Russians can agree on.

According to Sergei Karaganov, a former Kremlin foreign policy adviser, the situation could get “much more dangerous” than during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, when the world was on the brink of nuclear war.

‘NO LIMITS’
Under New START, which followed from the 1991 START treaty and was signed in 2010, the Russian and US arsenals are restricted to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads on no more than 700 deployed strategic missiles and bombers.

If that long-range missile pact isn’t prolonged and the INF collapses, “you have a situation where there are no limits on Russian and American nuclear forces,” said Steven Pifer, a former top State Department official and arms control expert.

In addition, Russia and the US would stop exchanging data on each other’s nuclear arsenals and permitting regular inspections. “It would be less predictable, less secure, less stable,” Mr. Pifer said.

Russia would respond to any US move to station land-based intermediate-range missiles in Europe by deploying similar missiles to target “all the bases where these weapons will be,” said Igor Korotchenko, director of the Center for Analysis of World Arms Trade in Moscow.

“And the US can’t stay safe over the ocean — we’ll create the same risk for the US as they do for us in Europe,” he said.

Sam Nunn, a former US senator and a prominent non-proliferation campaigner, says he’s increasingly concerned that “both countries can lose count of their strategic interests.’’

Some experts such as Thomas Graham, ex-White House adviser under George W. Bush, believe Russia and the US will blink when faced with the prospect of stepping into a void without the security of arms control.

Russia has proposed a 5-year extension to New START, to 2026, though it’s tying that to fixing complaints about the way the US has complied with the treaty, the Interfax news service reported Feb. 16.

“The chances are diminishing every day,’’ said Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian upper house of parliament. — Bloomberg

WASHINGTON — US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Saturday vowed to investigate an attack involving Russian citizens on American-allied forces in Syria but stopped short of accusing Moscow of orchestrating the assault.

Russia has acknowledged that five of its citizens were killed in a US-led coalition bombing in the eastern Deir Ezzor province after they were part of a group of pro-regime combatants which led an attack on positions held by the Syrian Democratic Forces.

“I understand that the Russian government now is saying that some of their not-military forces, contractors, were involved in that still unexplained attack,” Mr. Mattis said while flying back to Washington after a week-long tour of Europe, adding that Russian officers the US coordinated with were “apparently” unaware.

“But they took directions from someone. Was it local directions? Was it from external sources? Don’t ask me, I don’t know. But I doubt that 250 to 300 people, all just excited on their individual self, suddenly crossed the river in enemy territory, started shelling a location and maneuvering tanks against it.

“So, whatever happened, we’ll try to figure it out. We’ll work with obviously anyone who can answer that question.”

At the time of the attack on Feb. 7, the Russian defense ministry insisted it had no servicemen in the eastern province of Syria. However, many Russian citizens are fighting in Syria as mercenaries working for a private military company called Wagner according to numerous reports. Mercenaries not directly affiliated with the Russian military may be convenient for Moscow’s interests in Syria while assuring deniability of government involvement. — AFP