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ABM pact with Russia may have wiggle room - Powell
By Elaine Monaghan
WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made clear on Monday that the United States and Russia were seeking ways to avoid a withdrawal by Washington from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which stands in the way of U.S. plans for missile defense.
Powell was speaking a day after President George W. Bush met President Vladimir Putin on the margins of an Asian-Pacific gathering in Shanghai, China, and reported progress on narrowing differences on the Soviet-era pact's future and reducing nuclear arsenals.
Powell stressed that Bush had given the Russian leader no deadline for U.S. withdrawal from the pact, which Moscow wants to preserve but which the Bush administration regards as a Cold War relic it is likely to come into conflict with at some point because of tests of a missile defense program.
One reporter asked Powell if the treaty could survive in a new form, as Putin was telling his people he was ready to accommodate Bush on testing.
"I haven't quite heard him say that. ... But I have had discussions with some Russian colleagues of mine who suggest we can probably do more testing than we think we can under the treaty," Powell said, speaking aboard his plane on the way home from the same gathering in China.
"And we're looking at all of that. The important point in all of this: The president will not allow our missile development program to be constrained artificially by a treaty that he believes no longer serves a useful purpose in the 21st century," he added.
PROPOSAL DESCRIBED
A senior U.S. official had said that a proposal had been put forward to Bush to tell Putin that tests of the multibillion-dollar system would force Washington to serve notice of its withdrawal from the bilateral pact it signed with Moscow in 1972 unless an alternative could be negotiated.
Asked if this was in Bush's "talking points" for the meeting, Powell said: "Look, talking points are prepared for officials all the time, everywhere. I get them all the time. Sometimes I even read them.
"But what the president said was that he did not give any formal or informal notification of the United States' intention to withdraw from the ABM Treaty."
Though there were clearly no major breakthroughs at the talks, the U.S.-Russian relationship has been on a new footing since the two countries found common cause in fighting terrorism.
Bush would clearly like to be able to agree on something more concrete when Putin visits him next month at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
"We're under no constraints with respect to our thinking, and we'll see where we are in three weeks' time in Crawford," Powell said.
SIX MONTHS' NOTICE REQUIRED
The ABM Treaty, seen by Russia as the cornerstone of strategic arms control and a symbol of a unique relationship with the United States, allows either side to withdraw on six months' notice.
The United States says that new threats from what it calls "rogue states" like North Korea, Iran and Iraq require a new strategic framework to replace the Cold War one.
The ABM allowed each side to shield its capital city and one other site using missiles positioned to intercept any attack. The United States wants a much broader system.
Powell said that while Bush reminded Putin that Washington felt it needed to get beyond the pact's restraints, he gave him no notification, formally or informally, of any U.S. intention to withdraw from the treaty.
Powell said he could not give a time frame for when the United States could come into conflict with the treaty because of its testing needs.
"Very often it becomes a matter of differing groups of lawyers making a legal interpretation of what the treaty permits you to do and not do," he said.
"We have our lawyers, they have their lawyers, and the State Department lawyers often have fascinating debates with the Defense Department lawyers.
"That's one of the reasons we think this treaty has probably outlived its usefulness."
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