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Bush weighs missile defense tradeoff with Russia

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Tuesday, October 23, 2001

WASHINGTON ÑThe Bush administration is considering a deal that would delay the establishment of a missile defense umbrella in exchange for Russian cooperation in the U.S.-led war against terrorism and a halt in Moscow's aid to Iranian and Iraqi weapons programs.

U.S. officials said a proposal being studied by the administration would delay or shelve plans to cancel the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. The treaty prevents the testing and deployment of a national missile defense system.

President George Bush has not made such a decision, the officials said. The State Department is pressing for a gesture to Moscow on the ABM treaty that would ensure Russian cooperation on other issues. Such a U.S. offer could be presented to Russian President Vladimir Putin when he meets Bush in a summit in Crawford, Texas in mid-November.

Bush met Putin over the weekend at the Asian summit in the Chinese city of Shanghai. Officials said Bush discussed the ABM treaty with Putin as part of a larger initiative to improve cooperation between Moscow and Washington. "We really do need a basic strategic framework that involves a number of pieces," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said.

The proposal to maintain the ABM treaty is being supported by the Democratic-controlled Senate. Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin said a U.S. offer to maintain the ABM treaty could win Russian agreement to end its missile and nuclear aid to Teheran as well as a cessation of military support to Iraq.

"We want Russia to clamp down on arms sales to Iran, to Iraq," Levin told the American Jewish Congress on Monday. "We want Russia to move our way and to stop what we consider to be behavior which is threatening to us and to Israel. We have a much greater opportunity of Russia moving our way if we don't threaten Russia, if we can work out something with Russia, if we realize that our security to some extent is dependent upon her being secure; that there is an importance to there being agreements among nations to provide security for each other, at least for decent nations, that we cannot go it alone, whether we're talking terrorism or whether we're talking nuclear weapons."

Levin, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the Pentagon and intelligence community have not dismissed the threat of a nuclear attack from North Korea. But he said North Korea is unlikely to use a missile to deliver such a weapon in the coming years.

Pentagon officials have urged the administration to continue missile defense programs. But the Sept. 11 suicide attacks on New York and Washington have delayed all major programs until a series of reviews commissioned by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is completed in March 2002.

Congressional leaders who support the continuation of the ABM treaty have assured pro-Israeli lobbyists that a delay in a U.S. missile defense system will not affect Israel. They said Congress would continue to fund joint anti-missile programs such as the Arrow-2.

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