Russia, U.S. fail to bridge rift over NMD

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, JUNE 13. The defence chiefs of Russia and the United States have failed to bridge their differences over Washington's plans to build a National Missile Defence (NMD). At their talks in Moscow, the Russian side reiterated opposition to the U.S. plan, while the U.S. Defence Secretary turned down a Russian proposal to tackle missile threats by political means.

Following his meeting with the visiting U.S. Defence Secretary, Mr. William Cohen, on Tuesday, Russia's Defence Minister, Marshall Igor Sergeyev, restated Moscow's refusal to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty to allow the U.S. build an anti-missile shield.

``It is impossible to modernise the ABM treaty without breaking it,'' the Russian defence chief said. ``A breach of the treaty will spark off a new arms race. We have proposed unfolding a `political umbrella' to forestall missile threats by pooling the efforts of Russia, the U.S. and other countries at the political level.''

For his part, Mr. Cohen said a Russian plan to develop an anti- missile shield jointly with the U.S. and Europe was probably good for Europe, but could not offer the U.S. adequate protection against nuclear ``rogue states.'' The Russian President, Mr. Vladimir Putin, also failed to sway Mr. Cohen in favour of the alternative Russian proposal during their meeting in the Kremlin today.

Mr. Putin urged the Mr. Cohen to ``consider together the problems which are of concern to Russia and the United States,'' including a joint anti-missile defence system, the Interfax news agency reported. However, Mr. Cohen said the Russian plan ``in the short-term would not provide the kind of protection we would need for the United States.'' At the same time, he said Washington ``would be interested in exploring with the concept of `an umbrella over the emerging threat areas' and what that would entail technically as well as from a practical point of view.''

Russia has proposed building jointly with the U.S. and Europe a non-strategic missile system to intercept long-range missiles in their ascent or ``boost phase.''

Despite their differences, Mr. Putin expressed satisfaction with ``the development of relations between Russia and the United States in the past few months.''

The Russian and US defence chiefs today signed a programme of bilateral exchanges in the military sphere for the second half of 2000.

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Section  : International
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