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Experts urge Putin and Bush to "de-alert"
missiles
By Jon Boyle
MOSCOW, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Arms experts from the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences urged Russia and the United States on Wednesday to take their nuclear missiles off hair-trigger alert to reduce the risk of accidental nuclear war.
Alexander Pikayev, one of the authors of a new report on the subject, said Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush should discuss the issue at their summit later this month at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Currently, despite the end of the Cold War, both sides keep a number of intercontinental missiles armed and ready to go at three to five minutes' notice.
This is fast enough to respond to a pre-emptive strike aimed at their own missile silos. But it also gives them little time to check that a report of a hostile incoming missile is accurate, and not a false alarm or an accidental launch.
Pikayev said enlarging this decision window was an important pillar of talks on cutting the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals and efforts to work out a deal on anti-missile defence.
"De-alerting could partially help to reduce the risk of an accidental nuclear war and help end the current deadlock in U.S.-Russian strategic dialogue," Pikayev told Reuters.
"It's very likely that de-alerting will represent an important element of the U.S. nuclear posture review, and Russia needs to give a viable answer to that during, and after, the Crawford summit."
AGEING MISSILES
The issue has risen to prominence over the past decade, as Russia's cash-strapped military has struggled to modernise its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal and satellite control systems, most of which are now well past their intended service life.
That has increased fears that an accidental launch or a false alert could spark a nuclear holocaust.
While the issue would not dominate the Crawford agenda, deep cuts in nuclear forces and the de-alerting of deployed rockets were an important element of ongoing U.S.-Russian nuclear talks and, indirectly, tricky missile defence talks, Pikayev said.
Bush wants to build an anti-missile shield to protect the entire United States but it would wreck the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Putin says is the cornerstone of strategic stability. The sides remain deadlocked though U.S. officials believe Russia is coming round to their view.
Pikayev said he expected the two sides to trade pre-agreed unilateral arms cuts without entering into lengthy negotiations.
But many security chiefs are hostile to Putin's overtures to Washington and fear that, in reducing its nuclear arsenal, Russia may be giving up its main source of global influence.
Unless Putin can demonstrate a quid pro quo, he could be forced into a major U-turn in ties with the West, Pikayev said.
Among other things, at the nuclear level this would mean the kind of verification systems that would allow each side to be confident that the other was not reneging on undertakings.
RISK OF ACCIDENTS
Major-General Vladimir Belous, a co-author of the report, "De-alerting Russian-U.S. nuclear forces and the path to lowering the nuclear threat," told a conference at Moscow's Institute of Global Economic and International Relations that thousands of missiles remained on high alert.
"A considerable threat exists of an unexpected outbreak of nuclear war because of possible mistakes by top officials...as a result of an inadequate evaluation of the situation, or receiving false signals from early warning systems," he said.
In 1998, General Alexander Yakovlev, then head of Russia's strategic rocket forces, admitted that 62 percent of Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal and 71 percent of its military control systems had passed their intended service life, he said.
Ira Shorr, director of the American pressure group "Back from the Brink," which campaigns to raise the nuclear threshold, told the conference that the September 11 airliner attacks on U.S. landmarks had made defence forces more jumpy.
Shorr said the current U.S. nuclear posture gave less time to each president to decide on a nuclear launch that could wipe out both nations than Bush would have to mull an order to shoot down a hijacked passenger jet threatening to hit a building.
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