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The Times (UK)
14 January 2002
Moscow demands new arms treaty with US
FROM MICHAEL BINYON IN MOSCOW
RUSSIA is demanding that Washington sign a new arms control framework, and warns America that its hard line on Russia is undermining support for President Putin’s pro-Western policies.
Angered by the timing and manner of President Bush’s announcement last month of the US withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, Moscow is calling for a Russian-American “treaty on mutual security” to replace it.
The Russian delegation arrived in a sour mood in Washington yesterday to begin talks at the State Department today on signing a formal accord with America on deep cuts in missiles and warheads agreed by the Presidents at talks on Mr Bush’s Texas ranch.
It wants a legally binding document in place by the time Mr Bush visits Russia, and will also insist that recent White House proposals to store rather than destroy US missiles are unacceptable to Moscow. General Yuri Baluyevsky, heading the delegation, is likely to take a firm line with Douglas Feith, the US Under-Secretary of Defence.
Russia wants the new “treaty on mutual security” to specify the political and military partnership between the two countries, allowing Moscow some of the status of an equal superpower inherent in the ABM treaty. The Americans are likely to show little interest in this proposal, although Washington has talked vaguely about codifying arms cuts with a statement or even a treaty, if there are no tortuous Cold War-style negotiations.
Russia believes that, with the war in Afghanistan all but over, the US is less concerned about keeping Moscow on board. A series of critical remarks about Russian policy have wounded the Kremlin and raised fears that the Administration is reverting to the unilateralism evident before September 11.
In particular, Russia has bristled at the State Department’s denunciation last week of “overwhelming force” and human rights violations during recent Russian engagements in Chechnya. It also considered Washington’s call for the continued independence of TV6, the last Russian television station not under government control, an attempt to meddle in the legal case surrounding the bankruptcy of the station.
Moscow is also angry that Washington has kept Russia on a blacklist of states with a poor record on the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The list, published by Mr Bush last week, keeps Russia in the third of four categories, imposing tough restrictions on the sale of high technology.
“We would like to hope that, in the light of the new strategic relationship announced by the President of the United States and the President of the Russian Federation, the American Administration would reconsider this discriminatory decision,” the Foreign Ministry said in a sharply worded statement.
Russia fears that little has been gained from helping the US in the wake of September 11. It has done much that America wanted, but the ABM treaty has been discarded and the forces of several Nato countries are now on the soil of former Soviet republics.
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