WASHINGTON (KRT) — The Pentagon has postponed several missile defense tests to avoid violating a 1972 accord barring Washington and Moscow from developing nationwide anti-missile shields, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced Thursday.
The tests would have assessed the ability of a ship-borne radar to track ballistic missiles in space, something that is forbidden by the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Rumsfeld insisted that the tests were not postponed to reward Russia for supporting the anti-terrorism campaign launched by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in Washington and New York.
But the decision was clearly aimed at avoiding an anti-U.S. uproar at a time when the Bush administration needs all the international goodwill it can get amid charges that U.S.-led air strikes are claiming a growing number of civilian lives in Afghanistan.
Furthermore, the postponement announcement came just weeks before Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin are to meet in Washington and at Bush’s ranch in Texas to continue talks on replacing the ABM Treaty with a new framework. The United States wants an agreement that would allow the testing and deployment of a system that would protect the United States from attacks by a limited number of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The two leaders said after talks last weekend in Shanghai, China, that they had made some progress toward a deal in which the United States would trade deep cuts in offensive nuclear arsenals for Russia’s acceptance of a U.S. national missile defense.
Moscow, however, has yet to agree to junking the ABM Treaty, which it regards as a cornerstone of international arms control. Bush has said the United States would withdraw from the treaty if the talks with Putin collapse, but he pledged to adhere to a requirement that he give notice six months in advance.
“We will not violate the treaty while it remains in force,” Rumsfeld said at a news conference. “In recent days, to keep from having it suggested that we might not be keeping that commitment, we have voluntarily restrained our ballistic missile defense test program.”
“On test activities such as these … it is possible that someone could raise an issue because of ambiguities in the treaty, and we do not want to get into that debate,” he said.
The Bush administration had said in recent months that at some point the missile tests would conflict with the treaty. “That has now happened,” Rumsfeld said.
Russia, China and some U.S. allies fear that doing away with the treaty could ignite a new nuclear arms race.
The ban on systems capable of defending national territories from intercontinental ballistic missile attacks was designed to avoid nuclear war. At its core is the idea that one side will not launch a devastating nuclear strike if it cannot be assured of destroying its opponent’s ability to retaliate.
Under the treaty, Moscow and Washington are prohibited from testing sea-, air-, space- and mobile land-based national missile defense systems. They are permitted to test and deploy one fixed land-based system that can defend a limited slice of territory.
Bush has called the treaty a relic of the Cold War.