| RUSSIA | |
| 10-11 | US view of Duma and START II passage |
QUESTION: Another Russia question - have you had any communications or any sense that the Duma is going to act any time soon on START II?
MR. RUBIN: There are a lot of conflicting reports from Russia as to what the Duma's intentions are and what the prospects for passing the START II ratification instrument. In our view, the key point is for the Russian Duma to understand that Russia benefits from passage of START II, and Russia loses from failure to pass START II, because the United States is in a better position in the absence of START II.
Many of the key Russian officials recognize this. And we certainly hope that Russian Duma members put their interest in Russia over their interest in somehow getting back at any political opponent. At the same time, I can say that President Clinton and Secretary Albright have been assured with a fair degree of vigor that the government in Moscow wants to see START II ratified. But when it will be ratified, just the way sometimes other countries take a look at our legislative body and are puzzled by its timing, we wish that the Duma would act faster in the interest of Russia and in the interest of the United States. And in this regard, I think it's important to understand that the United States and Russia - the governments - have been engaged in recent years in a dramatic process of reducing the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States.
As part of the disarmament process, we've seen massive reductions in the numbers of nuclear weapon delivery systems and the number of deployed nuclear weapons, which is part and parcel of the message we've been sending to the rest of the world that having nuclear weapons is not the ticket to great power capabilities. There are great powers in the world, like Germany and Japan, that do not have nuclear weapons, and the nuclear powers are reducing their nuclear systems.
So the sooner that the Duma gets START II ratified, the sooner we can get on with movement to reduce further our systems under START III, the sooner we can meet the desires of the non-nuclear weapons states that the nuclear weapons states keep the "disarmament train" moving, and hopefully that will deter others from going nuclear. In other words, by failing to ratify START II, the Duma is not doing any favor to the cause of non-proliferation.
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(The briefing concluded at 2:00 P.M.)
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