ABM Treaty: Agreement Closer, U.S. Officials Hint

The United States and Russia are moving closer to agreement on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and strategic nuclear reductions (see GSN, Oct. 30), the Washington Post reported today.  If agreed, the deal would allow the United States to conduct missile defense tests that might otherwise violate the treaty (see GSN, Oct. 31).  An agreement could be announced when U.S. and Russian Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin meet later this month in Washington and Crawford, Texas.

“Testing will go on, but there will be no announcement of a U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty,” said a U.S. official.  “That would be associated with a decision to deploy a [national missile defense] system which will come later.”

The agreement made sense for now, said a senior U.S. official, who noted that no missile defense architecture exists today and therefore a decision on actually deploying a missile defense system remains years away.

Under the pending deal, the United States would propose to Russia that the two nations reduce the number of strategic nuclear warheads to between 1,750 and 2,250 each (see GSN story, today).

Internal Arguments

Advisers within the Bush administration who had different perspectives on the treaty and missile defense were still debating the form and details of the agreement, according to the Post. 

One contingent, led by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, sought to scrap the ABM Treaty quickly and was quick to highlight how the treaty was constraining U.S. missile defense testing and development programs, the Post said.

Another contingent, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, sought to find compromise with Russia.  This group believes that Russia was not threatened by U.S. testing, according to the Post.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell also suggested that Russia might be willing to accept more U.S. testing under the existing treaty provisions (see GSN, Oct. 23) (Pincus/Sipress, Washington Post, Nov. 1).

Ivanov Sees Powell Today

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov was scheduled to meet with Powell today in Washington for “synchronizing the clocks” of the pending summit, Ivanov said yesterday.  The two would be drafting a number of joint statements for the presidents to sign, ITAR-Tass reported (ITAR-Tass, Nov. 1).

Ivanov said Russia would welcome a new arrangement on nuclear weapons and missile defenses.  “We are working in such a way as to take into consideration the interests of security of both sides and the interests of international stability in general,” Ivanov said upon arriving in Washington (Joseph Boris, United Press International, Nov. 1).

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