RESPONSE TO RUSSIAN PROPOSAL ON DEVELOPMENT OF A GLOBAL MONITORING SYSTEM AND EXPANSION OF COOPERATION IN OTHER AREAS TO TRACK MISSILE AND MISSILE TECHNOLOGY PROLIFERATION
Russian-American consultations took place on January 19-21 in Geneva on the Start-3 Treaty and the ABM Treaty in accordance with the Russian and U.S. presidents' Joint Statement, adopted in Cologne in June of 1999. This document was presented to the Russians by the senior American negotiator, John D. Holum.
Russia has expressed great interest in studying the missile defense issues we have discussed in the context of a broader approach to nonproliferation.
We can reach agreement. Our own strategy with regard to nonproliferation of missile technologies includes three elements: first, we are trying to prevent the danger from arising, although if it does, we want to be ready to deter it or, if this is impossible, to be ready to protect ourselves against it. We think that each of these elements complements the others.
You should not mistakenly interpret the limited national missile defense system that we are developing as evidence that we have given up trying to prevent the proliferation of missile technologies or are unable to counter it. Despite all our efforts, however, we cannot expect that steps to prevent or counter it will be successful in all cases.
At this group's last meeting in October, I made a detailed presentation on global nonproliferation issues in which I covered a wide range of issues, including export control, Y2K, exchange of early warning information on missile launches and pre-launch notification, the Perry mission to North Korea and Iran.
A significant part of my presentation focused on areas in which we are already working together.
Joint efforts to adapt the ABM Treaty must be a part of this overall nonproliferation strategy, since it is a direct result of the proliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
In the past month in Moscow, Mr. Mamedov, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs gave Defense Minister Talbot [sic] two documents on a Global Monitoring System and a third document entitled "On Agreed Russian and American Approaches to Expanding Cooperation in Countering Worldwide Proliferation of Missiles and Missile Technology."
These documents enabled us to raise the discussion of these issues to another level.
We are ready to present our preliminary thoughts on your proposal on the Global Monitoring System (GMS) and seek further clarifications. In addition, we will offer our amendments to your draft document on a coordinated Russian-American approach to countering the worldwide proliferation of missiles and missile technology.
Allow me to make a few general comments on your draft document and the concept of GMS.
Global Monitoring System
Allow me first to dwell on the GMS, which is the main point of your cooperation proposals. The GMS proposal apparently has four basic elements:
The first is global monitoring of missile launches, which encompasses notification, exchange of early warning information, and the establishment of an international center, is a continuation of our joint effort on the initiative on missile launch information exchange put forth by our Presidents in September 1998.
Wide access to information contained in launch notifications and universal launch monitoring would be an important tool in building trust.
We agree that the principle of broad international participation is important to the success of launch notifications, and we can support the voluntary participation of any state provided that this participation does not legitimize the missile programs of rogue states.
Broad international participation in early warning or early detection information exchange or the establishment of an international monitoring center for this purpose will go beyond the framework of our concept in this area, but we are ready to study this idea in the future.
It is important that we gradually move toward bilateral agreements and understandings before we expand our efforts to involve others.
We are completely convinced that the first step in establishing any international system should be the signing of the agreements on exchanging missile launch information and notification of planned launches which we have been working on together. We hope that these discussions can be renewed in early February.
As soon as we reach an understanding on the agreement on notification of scheduled launches, we will be ready to discuss a diplomatic strategy to achieve broad international participation in this effort.
Previously we also informed you that we are ready to discuss the possibility of including, where necessary and reasonable, individual members of the "Big Eight" in the Joint Warning Center as a first step in carrying out President Yeltsin's initiative set forth at the Big Eight meeting in Cologne.
We have many questions about the second proposed element of the GMS, namely guarantees of the security of any state participating in the GMS.
Safeguarding the security of states that halt their missile programs is unfeasible.
We must, however, better understand what Russia thinks about this before further continuing discussion of this element.
The third element of the GMS pertains to incentives, including aid to national space programs for states that turn away from possessing missile systems.
We agree that in certain cases incentives can play an important role as part of an overall approach to a specific country in countering missile technology proliferation.
In our approaches to North Korea with regard to both issues of the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies, we have found that positive incentives can be effective, at least in deterring proliferation activities.
One-size-fits-all approaches to incentives would, however, be counterproductive in countering missile technology proliferation, and it is not clear that this can be done on a multilateral basis (in contrast to a bilateral basis)--we would welcome your assessments.
We are especially concerned about offering aid within the framework of national space programs. It is difficult to "aid" space efforts, especially a space launch, without promoting the proliferation of missile technologies. These technologies overlap much more than do technologies for the development of nuclear reactors for peaceful civilian use and those for a nuclear weapons development program.
While we are not ready to provide aid to national programs for the development of booster rockets, other space-related incentives might be considered, such as providing rocket-launching services at favorable prices for key countries. This might be an appropriate topic for discussion at a Big Eight meeting.
And finally, as regards the consultation mechanism, we are in favor of holding regular consultations among countries involved in this matter.
We do not believe that broad multilateral discussions will be productive at this time. These issues should be discussed within the framework of the MTCR [Missile Technology Control Regime] (and groups of MTCR partners) before they are moved outside this framework.
Discussions within the framework of MTCR partners, the Big Eight, and Russian-American bilateral discussions are possible ways to study these ideas in depth. We would not want GMS proposals to diminish the effectiveness of existing forums.
Other Proposals on Cooperation
Your additional proposals on cooperation were based on ideas that the USA put forth at our discussions of the ABM Treaty, for example, exchanging information on missile system proliferation, joint actions toward computer modeling and renewing and continuing our TMD [theater missile defense] testing programs.
We welcome your interest in these areas of possible cooperation that we proposed during our discussion of the ABM Treaty. We will be ready to study your ideas in detail in future meetings.
It is not clear from Russia's statement whether you are proposing that additional aspects of cooperation will be effected on a bilateral basis or with multilateral involvement.
From our side, we would like to study whether multilateral participation is logical in each individual case. We previously stated our desire to discuss with Russia the possibility of including individual Big Eight countries in the TMD testing program as a first step in implementing the initiative put forth by President Yeltsin in Cologne.
There is one Russian proposal pertaining to additional cooperation that raises some concern, namely the proposal to carry out confidence-building measures agreed to in the context of demarcation agreements on ABM's and theater ABM's on a bilateral basis. We do not believe that this will be proper.
Approach to Cooperation
We fully concur with point 5 of your draft statement that cooperation in countering missile and missile technology proliferation "should be long term and established in phases."
In general we believe that we should build a firm foundation for cooperation, first on a bilateral basis and later by involving Big Eight states and other states participating in the MTCR as necessary.
We are convinced that steps toward starting negotiations on an international agreement on GMS at a meeting in Moscow at the beginning of this year, as you suggest, will be premature.
This meeting is not only premature because of the many bilateral issues requiring our analysis, but also because both our sides agreed at the plenary meeting on the MTCR in Noordwijk in October of last year to continue discussion of approaches to the global threat of missile technology proliferation at a special meeting of MTCR partners in Paris in March.
To be honest, we were disappointed by the fact that Russia has moved away from the understanding on MTCR and invited non-partners to the conference it has proposed.
Conclusion
We welcome the study of new ideas on countering missile technology proliferation that will not disrupt current efforts.
A joint approach by the USA and the Russian Federation could make any nonproliferation efforts much more effective.
We also welcome your initiative in developing a statement on a coordinated US-Russian approach to this problem.
We are ready to work on this statement and determine if it is possible to find a basis for a coordinated approach.
A Russian response to our revised draft statement could be the next step.