- (AFP) - US President George W. Bush informed leaders
of Congress of his decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty, Senate Majority
leader Thomas Daschle revealed.
-
- Asked whether members of Congress visiting the White
House were informed of the decision, Daschle told journalists: "Yes
we were."
-
- Daschle, speaking after a weekly breakfast meeting between
Bush and Congressional leaders, did not say when the president intended
to announce his decision.
-
- Bush administration officials said Tuesday that the president
would decide on the future of ABM soon.
-
- Diplomatic sources in Moscow said Russia had been informed
that the decision would be made official on Thursday, according to Interfax
news agency.
-
- Three other key Congress members attended the breakfast
-- Trent Lott, the leader of the Republican minority in the Senate, Republican
House speaker Dennis Hastert, and leader of the minority Democrats in the
House, Richard Gephardt.
-
- Copyright © 2001 AFP. All rights reserved. ___
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- Russian Holiday Season Broken Up With US Threat On ABM
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- 12-13-1
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- Moscow maintained a stony silence in response to reports
that Washington will within days announce a withdrawal from the 1972 ABM
treaty despite Russian efforts to save the fundamental nuclear pact.
-
- Russia marked Constitution Day on Wednesday -- the semi-formal
start of a month-long holiday season here -- and officialdom refused to
be drawn on a slate of media reports that Washington had made up its mind
to abandon a missile pact which is still viewed as the "cornerstone"
of global stability in Moscow.
-
- The New York Times wrote that US President George W.
Bush informed Vladimir Putin of the decision in a telephone call last Friday
when the Russian leader was paying an official visit to Greece.
-
- US officials said the formal Washington announcement
would made by January at the latest and could even be issued as early as
Thursday.
-
- The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty allows both Moscow
and Washington to give a six-month advance notice before unilaterally abandoning
a Cold War-era pact that forbids either side from developing broad missile
defense systems.
-
- Citing a threat to US security from "rogue states"
like North Korea and Iran, Bush made construction of such a shield a key
plank of his foreign policy upon election last year.
-
- But Bush has faced some pressure from Europe, US Congressional
Democrats and even Secretary of State Colin Powell, who question the wisdom
of such a unilateral approach at a time when Washington seeks allies in
its global anti-terror campaign.
-
- Russian officials referred all inquiries about the ABM
to a Monday statement issued by Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who then
said that Moscow was prepared for the possibility of a unilateral US withdrawal
from the pact.
-
- Speaking at a joint press conference with Powell, Ivanov
reported that he and the visiting US secretary of state had made no progress
on the missile defense dispute.
-
- "Our national security program takes the possibility
(of a unilateral US withdrawal) into account," Ivanov said without
elaborating further.
-
- His deputy Georgy Mamedov earlier called such a US decision
"dangerous," a view backed up Monday by German Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder.
-
- Some Russian lawmakers attending a security conference
in Washington said Moscow was clearly not pleased with Bush's resolve,
but was unlikely to react violently to the move.
-
- "There will be no hysterics" from Moscow in
response to a formal US announcement on the ABM, ITAR-TASS quoted Federation
Council upper house of parliament foreign affairs committee chairman Mikhail
Margelov as saying.
-
- Putin initially threatened to counter a US withdrawal
from the pact by abandoning all existing nuclear disarmament agreements
and loading up on multiple missile warheads as a defensive measure.
-
- Such threats have not been repeated in recent weeks and
Ivanov and Powell even announced this week that they had been instructed
to prepare terms of a new nuclear disarmament agreement for Bush's visit
to the Russian capital next spring.
-
- However, while seeming ready to accept further US testing
of its futuristic missile shield, Russia had sought to preserve the ABM
in some form, the treaty representing one of the last vestiges of Moscow's
Soviet-era superpower claims.
-
- "Now, Moscow will have its hands untied," said
Fond Politika research institute chief Vyacheslav Nikonov, speaking to
the ITAR-TASS news agency at the Washington conference.
-
- Nikonov suggested that Russia could now press ahead with
Putin's threat to load up on multiple warhead intercontinental ballistic
missiles, a view particularly popular in Moscow hawkish defense circles.
-
- Sergei Karaganov, an expert on US-Russia relations, told
Moscow news agencies for his part that a unilateral US withdrawal meant
that Russia no longer needed to make its own sacrifices on strategic issues.
-
- "All of the responsibility now rests with the US
side and its allies," Karaganov said.
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