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US, Russia want strategic arms agreement by mid-2002
December 10, 2001
By Elaine Monaghan
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and the United States, riding high on a new partnership, said Monday they hoped to tie up a new strategic arms agreement in time for a visit to Moscow by President Bush in the middle of next year.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who met President Vladimir Putin against a background of unusually warm relations stemming from the common fight against terrorism, said the two sides were closer to agreeing numbers for nuclear warhead cuts.
Appearing with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Powell told a Kremlin news conference: "Both of our presidents have charged us...to find ways to formalize this agreement at lower levels of strategic offensive numbers and to try to get the work concluded in time for when they meet in Moscow."
Ivanov said Bush, who held summit talks with Putin at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, last month, was expected to make his first visit to Moscow in the middle of 2002.
Powell later arrived in Berlin for talks with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on the next leg of his tour of countries taking part in the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism. He travels to London and Paris Tuesday.
The linked issues of U.S. plans to build a missile defense and moves by both Washington and Moscow to cut stockpiles of nuclear warheads represent a wrinkle in relations otherwise enjoying unprecedented warmth.
Putin himself earlier set the tone for an amicable encounter with Powell by thanking the United States for helping Russian aid missions into Afghanistan during fighting with the Taliban.
Powell said U.S.-Russian cooperation over delivering humanitarian aid to Afghanistan symbolized open and transparent cooperation between the two countries.
ABM PROBLEMS STILL EXIST
Putin was the first world leader to call Bush after the September attacks, pledging support and cooperation. His call gave impetus to closer ties between the old Cold War rivals.
Russia turned words of sympathy into deeds, sharing intelligence with Washington and giving the green light for ex-Soviet Central Asian republics, still close to Moscow, to offer bases and airspace for U.S. forces in the Afghan campaign.
Planned nuclear arms reductions have been running in tandem with U.S. efforts to agree a way in which it can bow out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty which inhibits Pentagon plans to build a missile defense shield against "rogue" states.
Ivanov and Powell made clear they still differed over the future of the ABM accord. Speaking at a news conference with Powell in Berlin later Monday, Chancellor Schroeder also urged Washington to uphold the framework of disarmament accords.
"We want more contractual disarmament, not less," he said, adding that differences on this should not lead to a crisis and disarmament treaties could be modified for new circumstances.
Washington says the ABM treaty is a vestige of the Cold War that should be scrapped. Moscow, while partly agreeing with this view, says it is a cornerstone on which other arms accords rest.
The two countries announced Wednesday that they had slashed their nuclear arsenals to below the level of 6,000 warheads set by the START-1 treaty signed in 1991.
Putin and Bush announced substantial cuts in nuclear arms stockpiles during their Texas summit in the United States last month, bringing them to the lowest level since the 1950s.
At the summit, Bush announced plans to cut U.S. strategic offensive weapons from 7,000 warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200. Russia has said it is ready to cut its strategic warheads to about 1,500. Moscow insisted these be formalized in a treaty whereas Washington wanted a verbal agreement.
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