#4
Russia Passes on Missile Defense
January 11, 2001
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia is the only country in the world to have a shield against ballistic missiles over its capital, but it has shown no intention of matching the U.S. plan to build a nationwide missile defense system, analysts say.

A senior U.S. State Department official said Thursday that the Bush administration would welcome Russia's development of its own anti-missile technology for protection against regional threats. He added that the United States would be willing to cooperate with Russia in an anti-missile venture.

There was no official Russian reaction to the statement Friday. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said he was aware of the statement, but declined to comment.

Analysts said Russia and the United States were unlikely to pool their efforts because the U.S. statement appeared to be an attempt to improve the two countries' relationship rather than a practical proposal.

Some saw the U.S. offer as an attempt to mend the diplomatic damage inflicted by the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and differences over upcoming nuclear arms control talks.

``It was intended to sweeten the pill for the Russians after recent Pentagon statements,'' said Yevgeny Volk, the head of the Heritage Foundation's Moscow office. ``It's an attempt to show that Russia and the United States are still partners.''

Other analysts pointed out that Russia sees little sense in building such a system.

``Russia has no enemy to protect against and can't afford such a system anyway,'' said retired Lt.-Gen. Vasily Lata, the former deputy chief of staff of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces.

Lata, who is now a consultant to the PIR-Center, an independent think tank, said that the Soviet Union had conducted research to develop missile defense system components in parallel with President Reagan's Star Wars plans in the 1980s.

``The research was dropped after we saw that such a system would be too costly and inefficient,'' Lata said. Soviet and then Russian designers concentrated instead on developing countermeasures to missile defenses as a cheaper and more effective option, he said.

The Soviet Union deployed the A-35 anti-ballistic missile system, consisting of radars and 64 missile interceptors, around Moscow in 1974. In later years, that system was continually modified to enhance its ability to intercept ballistic missiles with independently-targeted multiple warheads. The latest version, the A-135, which includes both long- and medium-range missile interceptors, was put on duty in 1994.

Moscow's missile defense system complied with the ABM Treaty, which allows both the United States and Russia to protect a single site with no more than 100 interceptors. The United States had a similar system to protect missile fields in North Dakota in the 1970s but shut it down.

President Bush last month warned Russia that in six months, the United States would withdraw from the ABM treaty, which bars a nationwide missile shield of the kind the U.S. administration wants to deploy.

Bush's statement followed several years of heated arguments with Moscow, which tried to prevent the United States from scrapping the treaty.

Last year, Russia proposed to create a joint missile defense system with Western European countries - a move seen as an attempt to rally European opposition to the U.S. missile defense plan.

The Russian military said the proposed system could use Russia's S-300 and S-400 long-range air defense missiles, which have a limited capability to intercept missile warheads on close approach along with aircraft. Russia revealed few other specific details of its proposal, which has quietly been shelved.