DATE=4/17/2000 TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT TITLE=U-S-START TREATY NUMBER=5-46144 BYLINE=DAVID GOLLUST DATELINE=WHITE HOUSE CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: Arms-control debate is heating up in Washington following last Friday's ratification of the START-2 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty by the Russia's Duma, the lower house of parliament. Implementation of the treaty, and even deeper nuclear arms cuts under a START-3 deal, are threatened by the lingering dispute with Moscow over a proposed U-S missile defense system. V-O-A's David Gollust reports from the White House. TEXT: START-Two ratification by the Duma -- and Monday's announcement of an early-June Moscow summit trip by President Clinton - would appear to suggest that a break-through in arms control may be close at hand. But a looming confrontation between the two powers over U-S missile defenses is threatening to derail the entire process. The Clinton administration, while strongly backing START-2 and follow-on arms cuts, is also promising a decision by October on whether to deploy a limited national missile defense system aimed - nominally -- at protecting the United States from missile attack by North Korea or another of the so-called "rogue states." However Moscow argues the U-S defensive program violates the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile or A-B-M treaty, and warns it will not implement START-2 or consider further arms cuts if the administration goes forward. The missile defense plan is strongly backed by Republican leaders and some Democrats in Congress and the administration is under pressure to deploy a system, if testing over the next several months is successful. At a Washington news conference Monday, three former top U-S arms negotiators warned that hopes for nuclear arms control are threatened by Republicans, who they said are intent on "junking" the A-B-M accord regardless of the cost. One of the participants, Jack Mendelsohn - now vice president of the private Lawyers Alliance for the Wold Security - told V-O-A the Clinton administration has maneuvered itself into a corner by failing to choose between weapons cuts and the politically-tempting missile defense plan: /// FIRST MENDELSOHN ACTUALITY /// I think this administration managed to get themselves into a terrible box by going ahead on national missile defense and trying to get the START treaties. I think the Senate-the conservatives that are pushing for a national missile defense -- have managed to complicate arms control enormously. And if we make a decision to go ahead with missile defenses, we're going to have a lot of trouble pulling off arms control and arms reductions. /// END ACT /// Republicans counter that the A-B-M treaty is no longer even in force because of the collapse of the Soviet government that signed it. Kim Holmes, vice president for international studies at Washington's conservative Heritage Foundation, defends Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, and accuses President Clinton of soft-pedaling the rogue-state missile threat: /// FIRST HOLMES ACTUALITY /// I think Senator Lott and Senator Helms and others can make a pretty good case that the Clinton Administration has been blocking the ability to defend the United States from missile attack. I mean they've delayed the decision over and over again. They seem to be more interested in making deals with Russia than protecting the American people. That's pretty simple and pretty obvious. /// END ACT /// The Heritage Foundation's Mr. Holmes says he hopes the president will be able to persuade Russian President Putin to drop his opposition to the U-S missile defense plan. But he says if he cannot, and Russia backs out of START-2, it will not be the political and strategic calamity that many Democrats fear. Mr. Holmes says Moscow's military is strapped for cash and will have to make deep cuts in what he terms its "rusting" nuclear arsenal --even in the absence of START-2: /// SECOND HOLMES ACTUALITY /// They (Russian missile numbers) are going down anyway. There's not going to be a big arms race. So once again, this is not really about Russia. It's about North Korea. It's about, potentially, Iran. It's about potentially rogue states being able to threaten the United States. And Russia has no right to keep us vulnerable to that. /// END ACT /// Mr. Mendelsohn, a former U-S diplomat who helped negotiate both START treaties, agrees that Moscow will cut back its weapons whatever the outcome. However he says a collapse the START process will cost the United States all leverage over how those cuts will be made, along with its ability to verify the reductions: /// SECOND MENDELSOHN ACT /// Part of the START-2 package is a commitment by the Russians to get rid of their multiple- warhead missiles and to get rid of their largest missile, the SS-18. Without that START-2 treaty and that process, they have no obligations to do that. We will have lost something that we would really like to have. So while their forces will be coming down, we'd like them to come down in a particular way, and we'd like to be able to have the right to monitor it. /// END ACT /// START-2 would reduce the nuclear stockpiles of the two powers by nearly half - to no more than 35-hundred warheads on each side - over seven years. Advocates on both sides of the argument say President Clinton - at his upcoming summit with Mr. Putin - may try to conclude a "grand bargain" under which Moscow would bend on the A-B-M issue in exchange for START-3 weapons cuts much deeper than the 2000-to 2500-warhead levels that U-S military planners have recommended. Even though Russia's Start-2 ratification is not complete, and treaty side-documents are in dispute, the two powers Monday began a preliminary round of START-3 contacts in Geneva. (Signed) NEB/DAG/TVM/gm 17-Apr-2000 18:26 PM EDT (17-Apr-2000 2226 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America .