The US accused China Wednesday of conducting at least one secret nuclear test as Washington continued its push for a new arms control treaty that would include Beijing in addition to Moscow and Washington.

“I can reveal that the US government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons,” Thomas DiNanno, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, told a United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday.

“China has used decoupling — a method to decrease the effectiveness of seismic monitoring — to hide its activities from the world,” DiNanno added on X, noting that Beijing had conducted one such test on June 22, 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced much of the world into lockdowns.

China’s ambassador on disarmament, Shen Jian, did not directly address DiNanno’s charge, but said “the US continues in its statement to hype up the so-called China nuclear threat. China firmly opposes such false narratives … [The US] is the culprit for the aggravation of the arms race.”

The US allegations came one day after the expiration of the 2010 New START treaty between the US and Russia, leaving both countries without any binding constraints on their deployments of strategic missiles and warheads for the first time since the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) Agreement in 1972.

“Today, the United States faces threats from multiple nuclear powers. In short, a bilateral treaty with only one nuclear power is simply inappropriate in 2026 and going forward,” said DiNanno, warning that China is projected to have more than 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.

In response, Shen said China would not take part in trilateral negotiations at this time, adding: “In this new era we hope the US will abandon Cold War thinking … and embrace common and cooperative security.”

Meanwhile, Russian and US negotiators discussed the issue in the United Arab Emirates, where Russian, Ukrainian and American delegations held two days of talks on a peace settlement in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday.

“There is an understanding, and they talked about it in Abu Dhabi, that both parties will take responsible positions,” Peskov said, “and both parties realize the need to start talks on the issue as soon as possible.”

With Post wires