#8
US Department of State
17 January 2002
U.S., Russian Defense Officials Conclude Early Arms
Talks
(Delegates agree to series of working groups)
By Merle D. Kellerhals, Jr.
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- U.S. and Russian defense officials are setting up a series of
working groups to foster cooperation in verifying reductions of nuclear
arsenals, in exchanging data on technology, and in joint antiterrorism efforts,
Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith says.
"We agreed to set up a number of working groups to cover various areas
of our common interest to see if we can identify new types of cooperation and
agreements," Feith said January 16 during a special Pentagon briefing.
The delegations -- led by Feith, under secretary for defense policy, and
General-Colonel Yuriy Nikolayevich Baluyevskiy, the first deputy chief of the
Russian general staff -- held discussions January 15 and 16 in Washington as
part of broader diplomatic initiatives between the United States and Russia.
These discussions are expected to lead to recommendations for later talks
between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Russian Defense Minister Sergey
Ivanov.
Eventually, the negotiations are expected to lead to a summit in May or June
between President George Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in St.
Petersburg, Russia.
Feith said the talks also focused on transparency and predictability measures
in arms control, but without resorting to what he referred to as the formalized,
tortuous style of Cold War agreements between the United States and the former
Soviet Union, which tended to institutionalize a kind of hostile relationship.
"We're not looking to get echoes of that, and we're not looking to
recreate arms control-style negotiations or agreements," he said. "We
do think there are useful things that we can do so that the possibilities of
misunderstanding about each other's force structures are reduced, and that's
what we are driving at when we talk about transparency and predictability."
Feith said the United States is not ruling out anything as to the form
agreements with Russia might take, but wants what is most effective in enhancing
cooperation.
Baluyevskiy, however, said during a joint briefing he was "talking about
a legally binding document" to codify specific nuclear arms reductions. He
said Russia was "happy with the specific number within the region of 1,700
to 2,200 warheads" the United States pledged in November to achieve within
a decade. Putin, in talks with Bush at the time, also pledged to respond in kind
to warhead reductions in a range of 1,500 to 2,200.
Baluyevskiy also said "we are for irreversibility of the reduction of
the nuclear forces. The warheads dismounted from the carriers should be
destroyed and eliminated."
The United States, on the other hand, said in its newly released Nuclear
Posture Review that the nuclear warheads removed from the strategically deployed
U.S. arsenal would be placed in storage and could be retrieved and reactivated
on short notice.
And Baluyevskiy said Russia considers the United States withdrawal from the
1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty a mistake. The Russian Duma passed a
resolution January 16 condemning the United States for withdrawing from the
treaty, saying the pullout was destabilizing "since it effectively ruins
the existing highly efficient system of ensuring strategic stability and paves
ground for a new round of the arms race."
However, Feith said the process of improved relations between Russia and the
United States has been greatly accelerated by the September 11th terrorist
attacks.
"We are not hostile. What we are looking to do with the Russians is
develop a view of security that allows us to work together to deal with threats
that face both of us and not be thinking of each other as the enemy," Feith
said. "The world has changed, and the old way of thinking about strategic
stability is just not applicable anymore."
J.D. Crouch, assistant secretary of defense for international security
policy, said that as part of this greater cooperation there will be
"regularized data exchanges" on technology. What it will not become,
though, is "verifying limits of an arms control treaty," he said.
Feith said the goal of these negotiations and working groups "is that we
can create a normal relationship with Russia, the kind of relationship that we
have with countries all around the world, where they have conventional and in
some cases nuclear capabilities, but we have the kind of quality of relationship
with them that we don't think that our security requires us to balance our
forces against theirs."
"That's why, when we talk about measures of predictability or
cooperation or transparency with the Russians, we're doing it based on this new
concept, not based on the old balance-of-nuclear-terror ideas from the Cold
War," he said.
Copies of transcripts of the joint media availability between Feith and
Baluyevskiy, and Feith's separate Pentagon briefing, can be obtained on the
Internet at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2002/t01162002_t0116fba.html
and http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2002/t01162002_t0116fcb.html
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