The administration of President George W. Bush is confident it can
reach agreement with Russia, China and other nations on nuclear
weapons and missile defense, officials said on Sunday.
"We are going to make to the Russians and others an offer about a
new strategic framework that we think is appropriate," national
security adviser Condoleezza Rice told NBC's "Meet the Press."
"We hope it's an offer they can't refuse."
Both she and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld emphasized such a
framework would not include tacit US acceptance of a Chinese
missile buildup, as had been reported.
"That's not the US policy. It's simply not happening," Rumsfeld
said on CNN.
The Bush administration is in the midst of a diplomatic effort to
persuade Russia to join it in scrapping the 1972 Anti Ballistic
Missile treaty, which severely limits missile defenses.
Talks with China are set to begin over the next few weeks.
US
officials are pressing for a quick agreement, and have threatened
to unilaterally withdraw from the treaty to free the Pentagon to
carry out unfettered missile defense research and testing.
A
leading member of the US Congress scoffed at the administration's
optimism about a deal, and said withdrawal from the treaty would be
an "absolute disaster."
"They don't have a plan. This is an ideology. This is not
technology. This has become their foreign policy," said Delaware
Democrat Joseph Biden, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, on NBC.
"And here we are, look, in eight short months we have distanced
ourselves from our allies more than we ever have before, and we
brought our adversaries closer together than ever before."
The Senate Armed Services Committee voted along party lines on
Friday to yank US$1.3 billion from the US$8.3 billion earmarked for
the controversial and largely untested national missile defense
system in the fiscal 2002 budget request.
The committee also tied the president's hands in matters dealing
with missile defense, requiring the administration to obtain
congressional approval before spending money on tests that could
violate the ABM treaty.
"There is a hard core of people who, for whatever reason, are
determined to kill missile defense. And I just don't believe that
vulnerability of the American people to ballistic missiles is a
rational policy," Rumsfeld told "Fox News Sunday."
(chinadaily.com.cn
09/11/2001)