#3
U.S., Russia preparing new relationship
By PAMELA HESS, Pentagon correspondent

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 (UPI)--U.S. and Russian officials are preparing for a series of meetings in Washington in anticipation of a summit between their two leaders in November that may mark the start of a new "strategic framework" to replace old Cold War treaties, a State Department official said Wednesday.

"We have conducted intensive consultations of the new strategic framework" since the G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy, in July, said John R. Bolton undersecretary of state for Arms Control and International Security.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld travels to Moscow this weekend, and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov is coming to Washington Wednesday night. Lower-level officials are meeting in Russia Wednesday to discuss the ongoing campaign in Afghanistan, which is being bombed by U.S. and British planes in retaliation for the Taliban regime's refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden, the man Washington says was behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that killed some 5,000 people.

Top on the list of issues at the Washington-Crawford, Texas, summit between President Bush and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, will be whether and by how much to reduce each nation's nuclear arsenals. Bush wants to reduce the U.S. arsenal of about 7,000 nuclear warheads to as low a figure as possible consistent with national security.

For financial reasons, Russian leaders have privately nursed hopes of reducing their arsenal to around 1,500, well below the START III target of 2,000. In the past, Ivanov has publicly linked arms reductions to the maintenance of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Bush, however, is determined to scrap that treaty, either by mutual consent or by withdrawing from it unilaterally, in order to deploy a missile defense system to protect the United States.

But Tuesday, the U.S. ambassador to Russia indicated the impasse over ABM could be shifting.

"I am more confident that we will find a mutually advantageous solution to the issue of missile defense because we now have a stronger commitment to meeting new threats together," Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said in Moscow.

Indeed, the United States has adjusted a number of ballistic missile defense tests that would have violated the strictures of the treaty, delaying one that had been scheduled to take place while Putin was visiting Washington and Bush's ranch in Texas.

"We don't want people to think we are playing fast and loose with the treaty," Bolton said.

What form the framework takes still remains to be worked out, but may not be binding on both parties like a traditional treaty is, Bolton said.

"If you are talking about a new relationship ... you don't necessarily have to follow the same structures and recordations" of the Cold War, Bolton said. "It might well be advantageous to both sides not to be locked into very detailed commitments. We are open as the form.

"What we are really interested in now is the substance of the agreement," he told reporters at a breakfast in Washington.

The new strategic framework is expected ultimately to encompass new arrangements on the issues of nuclear arms and missile defense as well as counter-terrorism and keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the wrong hands -- known in diplomatic circles as counter- and non-proliferation.

The United States regards Russia as one of the world's worst proliferators of both ballistic missile technology and advanced conventional weaponry, particularly to Iran. Iran is on the U.S. State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism.

In early October, Moscow agreed to sell Tehran conventional arms worth $300 million a year, reversing a 6-year de-facto moratorium on such sales. Since 1995, under pressure from the United States, Russia had declined to trade in with Iran.

"The activities the Russians have been engaged in the proliferation area are things we think overall contribute to strategic instability in the world," Bolton said. "What we would like to see is adherence to the same kind of restraints we show."

Bolton said U.S. negotiations have told Russia, "'Iran is a lot closer to you than it is to us.' That argument has had resonance in the Russian government."

The United States is not offering any inducements to Russia to get it to restrain its proliferation, he said.

"I think this is a more mature relationship. It is not a quid pro quo. It is a question of them acknowledging ... self-imposed restraints," he said.

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