Thursday, November 15, 2001

Missile defense accord unlikely
By Sandra Sobieraj
Associated Press

CRAWFORD — As talks between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin shifted to Bush’s Texas ranch, White House officials said Wednesday that an accord on anti-missile defenses is not in the cards for this summit.

“Don’t look for anything of that nature,” White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters on the second day of talks between Bush and Putin.

“This is one stop along the road. We’ll make other stops after Crawford but each stop is built on the positive results of the earlier meetings.”

Chuck Kennedy/KRT WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and President George W. Bush walk to a news conference Tuesday.

On this stop, at the president’s rural, 1,600-acre Prairie Chapel Ranch, Bush was focused on building his budding personal relationship with Putin.

After Putin’s afternoon arrival, he and his wife were being treated to what one aide called “a finger-lickin’ Texas dinner” of guacamole, peppered beef, smoked catfish and pecan pie.

Gray skies threatened to dampen the open-air picnic but Bush remained eager for “an informal chance to break bread and to cover new ground and to improve relations that are already good,” Fleischer said.

Both leaders affirmed Tuesday they had too many nuclear weapons. Both spoke of slashing their arsenals of long-range warheads to about one-third the current size.

ush prefers an informal arrangement; Putin prefers a traditional arms control accord.

But both also are signaling they are flexible, giving every indication that procedure will not block their intent to do away with thousands of nuclear weapons.

Bush, who took the first step at a White House news conference after meeting with Putin for three hours in the Oval Office, said his proposal to set a new U.S. ceiling of 1,700 to 2,200 long-range warheads over the next decade was “fully consistent with American security.”

“The current levels of our nuclear forces do not reflect today’s strategic realities,” he said before leaving for his home in Crawford, Texas.

Putin matched him in a speech later at the Russian Embassy.

“Security is created not by piles of metal or weapons,” Putin said. “It is created by political will of people, nation-state and their leaders.”

So, the Russian president said, in light of a new and warm U.S.-Russian relationship, Russia can afford to reduce its arsenal to one-third or less.

The United States now has about 7,000 intercontinental-range nuclear warheads and Russia about 5,800.

Still, Putin said, he preferred codifying the reductions in formal agreements. “The world is far from having international relations based solely on trust, unfortunately,” he said.

And Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Russia would keep pushing for a formal agreement. “To make it more reliable, we need to put it down in a treaty,” he said. “It doesn’t mean we distrust anyone. Just the opposite. It would consolidate and boost our relations.”

Bush, on the other hand, said he saw no need for “endless hours” of negotiations.
But both leaders signaled their willingness to compromise.

Swinging a deal on anti-missile defenses is likely to be more difficult.

Senior administration officials told The Associated Press they did not expect an agreement on missile defenses before the summit talks end Thursday in Texas.

Bush wants to go ahead with a testing program that inevitably will run up against the prohibitions of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

Putin, who considers the treaty a cornerstone of arms control, said “the position of Russia remains unchanged.”

Even so, there apparently is room for bargaining, if not this week then when Bush goes to Moscow, possibly in January.

“Let’s look together at what tests you need,” Ivanov said. “If such tests don’t violate the treaty, why discard it? We don’t think that the ABM treaty is outdated.”

If they were at a dead end, Bush likely would assert the right to withdraw from the treaty. But a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the president would not take that final step during the current talks.

Bush hopes to persuade Putin to allow the United States to proceed with research and development of a missile shield without declaring the work a violation of the 1972 pact. In exchange, Bush promised Putin to keep Russia informed of the tests. U.S. officials said the proposal would give both men what they want: Bush could begin developing a missile shield and Putin could tell his public that he kept the ABM intact.

Finding common ground in other areas, the two leaders formalized a series of agreements to combat bioterrorism, bolster the Russian economy, battle money laundering that finances terrorism and strengthen Russia’s ties to NATO — the 19-member military alliance formed to counter Moscow in the Cold War.

Meanwhile, the Council for a Livable World, a private group that advocates arms control, said Bush’s decision to reduce the U.S. arsenal was “a good first step that has been a long time in coming.”

But, the Council said, there needs to be verification, counting rules and a procedure for dismantling the retired weapons.

“President Bush may be able to see into President Putin’s soul, but today’s verbal agreement can become tomorrow’s misunderstanding,” the Council said in a statement.