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Russian MPs seek legislative 'antidote' to US NMD system
By Diana Rudakova and Anatoly Yurkin

MOSCOW, December 18 (Itar-Tass) - Russian parliamentarians have begun to seek a legislative "antidote" for the U.S. National Missile Defense System with a debate on the Treaty on the Reduction of Strategic Offensive Potentials (SOP), which was submitted for ratification to the State Duma. Chairman of the Duma Committee on Defense Andrei Nikolayev told Itar-Tass the day before that a working group would be formed in the lower house to "improve" this accord.

The group's main task will be to draw up "corresponding amendments" to the presidential bill on the ratification of the Treaty. For instance, Itar-Tass has learned that the MPs are moving, in particular, to supplement the presidential document with a clause on the procedure of Russia's withdrawal from the SOP Treaty in the event of "extraordinary circumstances".

The parliamentarians want the latter to include: "U.S. violation of Treaty provisions fraught with a menace to the national security of Russia; deployment of the U.S. NMD and building up of strategic offensive potentials in the countries that are not affiliated to the SOP Treaty". One more reason for Russia's withdrawal from the Treaty could be "implementation of decisions by the United States and other countries, including NATO members, in the field of military development, creating a threat to the national security of the Russian Federation, including the deployment of nuclear weapons in the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance".

"Coinciding start of the Treaty ratification procedures with 'leaks' about Washington's plans to get down to the accelerated construction of its NMD system is most likely a serious mistake of the United States, which refuses to reckon with foreign policy consequences of unpredictable destabilizing force." Major General Yuri Lebedev, who is an eminent Russian expert in strategic armaments, expressed this view to Itar-Tass on Wednesday.

In his opinion, the situation is aggravated by Washington's already announced intention to expand to the maximum the area of the geographic infrastructure that is to guarantee the functioning of the NMD system. Inclusion in this system, the expert added, of the world's most powerful radar station in Greenland is, from the military point of view, "intended to create a Washington-controlled radar belt in the Arctic with the use of another major Globe-2 radar in Norway, which was moved there from one of the North American states".

Since the appearance there of ballistic missiles, belonging to the so-called rogue nations, is absolutely ruled out, Moscow and its European partners, in Lebedev's opinion, can only conclude "Pentagon does not trust Russia, Britain and France, which possess strategic offensive potentials".

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