Russia Seeks More Time to Disarm
By JUDITH INGRAM
Associated Press Writer
September 6, 2001, 12:19 PM EDTMOSCOW -- A top official acknowledged Thursday that Russia had delayed destroying its chemical weapons stocks but said Moscow is committed to doing so and deserves a five-year extension of an international deadline.
A former Russian prime minister, Sergei Kiriyenko now oversees the Volga River region, where five of Russia's seven chemical weapons storage sites are located. He also heads a new committee charged with leading the political effort to destroy Russia's 44,000 tons of chemical weapons, the world's largest arsenal.
Russia ratified the Convention on Chemical Weapons in 1997, committing itself to destroy the stockpile within a decade. But it had long complained that it could not afford the estimated $7 billion program despite pledges of aid from the United States, Europe and Canada.
Kiriyenko told reporters that until this year Russia had done too little to fulfill its obligations under the 1993 convention and the U.S. Congress had good reason to freeze its funding for the program over the last two years.
"We certainly understand that insofar as Russia, in the period from 1997 ... until 2000, did not devote itself to the problem, we ourselves are guilty," Kiriyenko said.
Now the Cabinet has approved a new, cheaper program that would allow Russia to destroy its arsenal by 2012, without having to seek international funding beyond what has already been pledged. The new program cuts the originally planned seven destruction sites to three, and halves the estimated cost to about $3.5 billion.
As evidence of the government's new attitude, Kiriyenko pointed out that Russia had transferred authority over the destruction effort from the defense ministry to a civilian agency, underlining its position that Russia no longer considered the weapons an active part of its military arsenal.
The Russian government devoted six times more funds to the program this year than last, and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov has agreed to a further increase in next year's budget, Kiriyenko said.
This year, Russia completed destruction of the detonators used for its chemical weapons, and it is close to completing elimination of its stocks of phosgene, a so-called choking agent that disables or kills by making the lungs fill with fluid, Kiriyenko said. Destruction of these stocks is the least complex of all the weapons elimination processes.
But Russia will need five more years to complete the destruction, since some of the facilities have not even been built. Kiriyenko started Russia's campaign for a deadline extension in Tokyo earlier this week, and he is set to embark on a tour of the other Group of Seven capitals this month.
Copyright © 2001, The Associated Press
Just 5 more years! Honest!!!
Russia Adamant on ABM Treaty
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Associated Press Writer
September 6, 2001, 2:44 PM EDTMOSCOW -- Russia is ready to discuss U.S. concerns about missile threats but firmly stands for keeping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov wrote in a book that hit Moscow bookstores Thursday.
The ABM treaty has "proven its central role in ensuring strategic stability," Ivanov said in his book, "The New Russian Diplomacy: Ten Years of the Country's Foreign Policy," which sums up Moscow's post-Soviet diplomatic activities.
Ivanov's firm reiteration of Russia's adherence to the ABM contrasted with a senior U.S. administration official's statement in Washington on Wednesday that Moscow may be on the verge of accepting the principle of limited anti-missile defense, which would violate the treaty.
Ivanov's views underlined once again how each of the two countries, while professing readiness to hear out the other, is convinced its own unbending stance will win out in the end.
President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in July to discuss Washington's missile defense plans and deeper cuts in nuclear arsenals in a series of consultations. U.S. officials have made it clear they want the talks to move briskly, but the Russians favor prolonging the talks.
With the Pentagon still in the process of assessing how many nuclear weapons the United States needs, the consultations have brought no visible results yet. Kremlin officials have expressed irritation about the talks, saying Washington's failure to make specific proposals has made them pointless.
The consultations will continue this month, with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Undersecretary of State John Bolton and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith talking separately with Russian delegations.
Putin is scheduled to again meet with Bush at the sidelines of the Asian economic summit in Shanghai next month, then visit the U.S. president at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, in November, but Russian officials and analysts have been skeptical of the chances for a quick compromise.
Oleg Chernov, deputy secretary of Putin's security council, told The Washington Post on Thursday that "it's impossible" that an agreement would be reached that quickly and said it would take at least another year to negotiate a compromise.
Chernov was unavailable for comment Thursday, and a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry refrained from comment.
Alexander Pikayev, a military analyst for the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow, said no quick breakthrough in talks was likely.
"As long as the Pentagon is still busy with a review of U.S. nuclear forces, it's impossible to reach an agreement on missile defense and nuclear cuts by November," he said.
Russia has firmly opposed the U.S. intention to build a national defense against ballistic missiles, saying such a missile shield would tilt the military balance in the U.S. favor and undermine global stability. It has rejected U.S. arguments that the planned missile defense, aimed at threats from such nations as North Korea, is not intended equally to deter a massive strike of the kind Russia is capable of launching.
Ivanov argued in his book that the treaty allows "finding effective solutions to the problems related to spread of mass destruction weapons and missile technologies."
"Russia doesn't refuse to jointly assess the missile threats our American partners are talking about," Ivanov said, adding that "as of today these threats are purely hypothetical."
Copyright © 2001, The Associated Press
"these threats are purely hypothetical."
Would these commies lie to us?