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Q: Can you go through what the U.S. position is right now with regard go the ABM Treaty? What it is you want to do. There have been reports that you want changes that will allow you to station 100 interceptors...
Briefer: I'm not prepared to go into depth on the nature of our, the specifics of some of the issues here. I will say some general things on that matter.
We, of course, began to engage the Russians on this question of limited national missile defense in the ABM Treaty last winter. We had meetings including a meeting that Strobe Talbot headed that went to Moscow in February. That general process of engagement on the needed modification of the ABM Treaty to accommodate limited NMD deployment should the United States decide to proceed with such deployment has been resuming over these last few weeks and will continue in the weeks ahead.
We are convinced that there is a serious emerging threat of long-range missile attack capabilities coming in the hands of rogue states like North Korea and Iran. We, as you know, way back in the beginning of the year the Secretary of Defense announced that within the FYDP there would be dollar set aside if there was to be a positive decision made by the President after consulting with his advisors on moving down the road toward deployment of a limited national missile defense, and we put money in the FYDP that would cover the costs within the FYDP for such a limited system.
The decision on whether there would be such a deployment continues to be one that will be made at the beginning of next summer, but the President has consulted with his advisors on trying to understand the overall character of the deployment were we to decide to go ahead next summer, and on that basis we have begun to engage the Russians in a more specific manner about the question of ABM Treaty modification.
Q: Can you say, there are many different aspects to that whole topic. Which, can you give us an example or two of the specific aspects of that problem that he's going to discuss with...
Briefer: He will discuss the general issue and about the need to make the adjustment. He will not be, Secretary Cohen will not be going into considerable detail about the potential nature of the modifications. He will talk at a more general level about the necessity, about our perspective on this, on our belief that we should in fact accommodate the treaty to the possibility that we would move ahead in this direction.
Q: In other words he's not going to negotiate...
Briefer: He is not going there to negotiate.
Q:...to impress upon them what the threat is...
Briefer: He is going to talk about the threat and talk in general about where our approach lies, but the more detailed negotiation is not his responsibility.
................Q: To go back to arms control, is there... There have been reports on these latest negotiations with Talbot where the Russian side is suggesting that the Americans are linking an agreement on modifying the ABM Treaty with proceeding to START III negotiations without ratification of START II. Is that...
Briefer: No. Our policy continues to be that we strongly support and urge the ratification of START II. We have talked with the Russians and our talks have always been they are not negotiations about START II, I mean about START III. We have had discussions of our respective views on START III. But we've said, both sides agree we should not start negotiations until START II is ratified.
Q: What you're doing in effect though is getting START III ready so there will not be lengthy negotiations once START II is approved.
Briefer: It's certainly our desire. The idea that these two ought to proceed in parallel is absolutely correct. We do believe that we ought to work on the modification of the ABM Treaty with moving ahead to either further reductions, as were agreed at Helsinki, on START III. And your characterization is right. We'd like to be in a position to move ahead swiftly in those matters, and we certainly have continued to urge the Russian government to engage the Duma beginning this month on the possibility of ratification.
Q: What are the prospects...
Briefer: It's hard to tell. It's one of those things that ebbs and flows. By all indications the Duma was on the brink of ratification on two occasions within the last year, and we'll just have to see. They've been in recess for a long period. There clearly has been the impact of the events in Kosovo. We'll just have to see in the coming weeks.
Q: In fact at the urging, the leaders at Spaso House...
Briefer: Certainly. He has done that in the past. He will continue to say we strongly believe it is in our mutual interest to move along the strategic arms reduction path, and that includes ratifying START II, moving on quickly to negotiate further reductions under START III. We will certainly talk with the Duma members about that being our desire.
....................Q: There's been a lot of discussion in Russia in recent weeks about the-- this is in the aftermath of the Kosovo war--about the necessity to depend on nuclear weapons for their national defense. Especially including defense of the new generation of miniaturized weapons.
Is the Secretary alarmed by this? Is there going to be discussion on this? Is this having an impact on the CTR program and other cooperative programs?
Briefer: I can't speak for the Secretary's state of mind on this or any other matter.
The Russian discussion of, in their military doctrinal writings and discussions with one another, and as they've expressed them to the external audience, has certainly put some greater emphasis on their potential use of nuclear weapons, or integrating them into their strategy in extreme circumstances if they're threatened by war. That clearly has occurred over these last few years. The Secretary certainly is well aware of this, as are we.
The issue of whether there's going to be a new generation of nuclear weapons is less clear an issue. I can't comment on his point of view on those matters. The Russians have an ample supply of nuclear weapons from the old Cold War era, both theater and strategic. So the issue about weapons--that's not a key driver in their ability to have a nuclear response.
Q: Speaking of great numbers of nuclear weapons, Russia of course still has thousands and thousands of tactical nuclear weapons which they don't openly discuss much in terms of numbers. The United States is anxious for them to get rid of those from two standpoints. They don't want them to have them, and number two, (inaudible) steal them. Will that come up?
Briefer: At the Helsinki Summit in 1997 one of the topics that was agreed would be part of START III would be taking first steps to address the problem posed by theater nuclear weapons. So they are already sort of on the agenda from both sides as issues to be discussed. The might be touched upon, but again, since the Secretary is not there to negotiate in detail at all about, or even to do discussions in detail about START III, he's unlikely to get into much of those types of issues in any detail.
The Russians, of course, committed themselves back in 1991-1992 to a set of unilateral reductions when the two Presidents announced unilateral initiatives on both sides. We have proceeded to implement those initiatives of President Bush and the Russians tell us that they've come a fair amount of way implementing theirs. We continue to talk with them about those matters periodically.
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