By
The Associated Press
MUNICH, Germany - A top Russian security official sternly warned the new Bush administration yesterday that a planned U.S. national missile defense system would trigger a new arms race that would eventually extend into space.
Sergei Ivanov, secretary of President Vladimir Putin's powerful security council, told an international conference of defense ministers and experts that the system would by definition abolish the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
"And the destruction of the ABM treaty, we are quite confident, will result in the annihilation of the whole structure of strategic stability and create prerequisites for a new arms race - including one in space," he said.
Bush's new defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, sought to reassure concerned European allies during the conference Saturday that the missile defense system would threaten no one except aggressors. Rumsfeld also said that while the United States would consult with its allies, it would not be dissuaded from the project.
However, Russia and the United States expressed clearly different views on the 1972 ABM treaty during the weekend conference. Ivanov said the importance of the treaty "has not faded."
By contrast, Rumsfeld, who returned to Washington Saturday, called it "ancient history."
Supporting that view, U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman told delegates yesterday that the treaty "is an expression of a bipolar world."
"We are in a multipolar world, and therefore we need new documents that will indeed express what strategic interdependence means today."
The United States wants the missile defense system to defend itself against rogue nuclear threats and has strenuously countered Russian fears that it is being constructed against Russia.
Ivanov urged in his speech that the rogue threat would be more effectively countered with politics, pointing out progress in the last year in normalizing relations between communist North Korea and South Korea.
Former U.S. Secretary of State William S. Cohen shot back that proliferation of Russian weapons technology to countries like Iran provided impetus to the national missile defense. "One way to deal with the problem is to stop proliferating. Russia must cease and desist in that regard," Cohen said.
Cohen also confronted Ivanov with Russian suggestions of U.S. involvement in the sinking of the Kursk submarine.
"The Kursk was a great tragedy. Many, many Russian sailors were doomed to death. We continue to see accusations, however faint or indirect, that somehow it was caused by a collision with an American submarine. That again is a complete fabrication. There was no collision with an American submarine."
