- back to Tribal Messenger

Tuesday December 11 8:04 PM ET

Bush to Back Out of '72 Nuclear Pact

By RON FOURNIER, AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush, eager to deploy a missile shield long sought by Republicans, soon will give Russia notice that the United States is withdrawing from a landmark 1972 arms-control treaty, U.S. government officials said Tuesday. The pact bans missile defense systems.

Bush will invoke a clause in the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty that requires the United States and Russia to give six months' notice before abandoning the pact, the sources said.

Initial White House plans were to announce the decision Thursday, but officials cautioned the date could change. One source said formal notice would be issued in January. The four government officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

``The time is coming when we will need to move beyond the ABM treaty,'' said Sean McCormack, a White House spokesman. Last Thursday, a group of Russian military officials on a visit to Washington told private American arms-control experts they expected the Bush administration to give notice of withdrawal over the year-end holidays.

Bush told Putin during their autumn talks in China that he would withdraw from the ABM in January even if Russia had not agreed to a deal by then.

With the decision, Bush takes a huge step toward fulfilling a campaign pledge to develop and deploy an anti-missile system that he says will protect the United States and its allies, including Russia, from missiles fired by rogue nations.

Bush has said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks heightened the need for such a system.

Russia and many U.S. allies have warned Bush that withdrawing from the pact might trigger a nuclear arms race. Critics of the plan also question whether an effective system can be developed without enormous expense.

Conservative Republicans have urged Bush to scuttle the ABM, rejecting proposals to amend the pact or find loopholes allowing for tests.

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Bob Stump, R-Ariz., said he has received no advance tip from the administration, but he backs the plan.

``There's all these questions about Russia upholding their end of the treaty anyway, and I just don't think we should penalize ourselves,'' Stump said. ``We shouldn't delay our ballistic missile defense. If it takes withdrawing from the ABM treaty, that's fine.''

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., told CNN he was opposed to pulling out of the pact. ``It is not a good idea. It would be a real setback for defense and foreign policy to violate the ABM treaty.'' He added: ``It's a slap in the face for many people who have committed years if not decades'' to arms control.

The president defended his push for a missile shield during a national security speech Tuesday at the Citadel in South Carolina.

``For the good of peace, we're moving forward with an active program to determine what works and what does not work,'' Bush said. ``In order to do so, we must move beyond the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a treaty that was written in a different era, for a different enemy.''

``America and our allies must not be bound to the past. We must be able to build the defenses we need against the enemies of the 21st century,'' he said.

According to Bush administration officials, Russian President Vladimir Putin had assured Bush during their October talks in Washington and Crawford, Texas, that U.S.-Russian relations would not suffer even if Bush pulled out of the treaty.

They said Bush's decision reflects a desire by the Pentagon to conduct tests in the next six months or so that would violate the ABM.

Tests may be conducted on sea-based radars and missile interceptors, which could be fielded in combination with the land-based systems that the Pentagon has been testing for years and which are permitted under the treaty.

The Pentagon later might test space-based missile defense technologies.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that even after the administration gave notice of its intent to withdraw, the administration would be interested in continuing discussions with the Russians on an arrangement to replace the ABM treaty. If that produced agreement within six months, there would be no need for a formal withdrawal.

The decision came as Secretary of State Colin Powell, in Moscow, said Russia and the United States are near agreement on drastic cuts in long-range nuclear arsenals.

But the U.S.-Russian disagreement over missile defense is so deep that Russia is bracing for the possibility of a U.S. withdrawal from the landmark ABM treaty, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told a joint news conference with Powell on Monday.

Another major nuclear treaty, the 1993 START II treaty to reduce stockpiles of long-range nuclear warheads to 3,000 to 3,500 by 2003, appeared to be in jeopardy.

The Cold War-era ABM treaty is based on the proposition that stripping a nuclear power of a tough defense against missile attack would inhibit launching an attack because the retaliation would be deadly.

Past supporters of the treaty, such as former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, support Bush in his view the world has changed over the past three decades.

Russia is no longer an enemy, and the United States needs to mount a defense against potential attack from North Korea, Iran or other states with nuclear ambitions, they say.

But Jack Mendelsohn, a former U.S. negotiator, sharply criticized Bush's decision.

At a time when the United States seeks allied support in coalition operations against terrorism, Mendelsohn said Tuesday ``to unilaterally abrogate part of a formal treaty structure makes no bloody sense."

- back to Tribal Messenger