Bush, Putin Agree to Slash Nuclear Weapons

14/05/2001| IslamWeb

WASHINGTON (Islamweb & News Agencies) - In a radical departure from Cold War-era arms policies, President Bush said on Tuesday the United States would slash its nuclear warheads by two thirds in the next decade and Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to try to follow suit.
But the two presidents, at their fourth meeting since June, said they still had not reached an agreement that would allow the United States to pursue a missile defense system while salvaging the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which expressly forbids missile defenses.
``We have different points of view about the ABM treaty,'' Bush told a joint news conference with Putin in the White House East Room. Putin said Russia's position that the ABM treaty must be maintained ``remains unchanged.''
Both sides pledged to continue dialogue on the ABM issue. A senior U.S. official said the leaders would discuss the issue further when they meet at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, on Wednesday and Thursday.
But Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested that no deal should be expected soon, and the two presidents were no closer to a deal than they had indicated publicly. ``You got the public statement that you're going to have to live with for a while,'' said Powell.
Bush called the treaty ``a piece of paper that has codified a relationship that no longer exists'' between the United States and the Soviet Union.
However, he said he understood that ``this is obviously a subject that's got a lot of ramifications to it.''
Saying the current levels of U.S. nuclear forces ``do not reflect today's strategic realities,'' Bush announced the United States over the next 10 years would unilaterally reduce its nuclear weapons stockpile to between 1,700 and 2,200. Under Bush's plan, warheads would be removed from the missiles but would not be fully dismantled. A U.S. official said Washington was open to allowing Russia to verify the reductions.