U.S. to Invite Russian Role in ‘Star Wars’

The Bush Administration plans to propose to Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin next month that the two countries join in developing a new global defense system that would provide protection from ballistic missile attacks to a large community of nations, according to a senior Pentagon official.

The plan is intended as a reshaping of the old Cold War-era “Star Wars” missile shield for a new world in which Soviet missile attacks on the United States are no longer a credible threat. In its place lie the possibilities of attacks by Third World countries or of accidental missile launchings.

The proposal follows up on Yeltsin’s declarations shortly after his ascension as president last winter that the United States and the Soviets should cooperate as friends on defenses that would protect the entire world, instead of girding for war against each other.

The agreement--portrayed by officials as a formal commitment to pursue a defense plan--is to be presented to Yeltsin in his first full-dress summit with President Bush in Washington next month.

“We think the first step is to get some agreement to and commitment to the global missile defense system--the concept,” Assistant Secretary of Defense Stephen J. Hadley told a House Armed Services Committee panel. “ . . . We think the meeting between President Bush and President Yeltsin is a terrific opportunity to try and get the first step of that.”

Hadley’s testimony before the panel May 6 was the most extensive outline so far on progress toward turning the utopian rhetoric that accompanied the Soviet collapse months ago into a concrete endeavor.

But the concept envisioned by the Bush Administration, Hadley acknowledged, “would require moving beyond the restraints of the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty”--presumably meaning that some key treaty limitations would have to be canceled.

Moscow has long opposed any such changes in the treaty, which prohibits the kind of space-based sensor devices and interceptors that are at the heart of the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as “Star Wars.”

Despite its interest in missile defenses, Russia will be careful not to allow the United States to go forward with a costly, high-technology effort that it could not match, particularly since Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has said flatly that the United States would not share its technology secrets with the former Soviet states under any program.

Hadley could not be reached Thursday to elaborate on his remarks, which first emerged in an Associated Press account earlier in the day. But another senior defense official reiterated that the United States would be cautious about what it shared in a joint effort.

“We’re willing to share information on launches,” he said. “In terms of doing something beyond that, it’s still being studied. There’s a lot of resistance to sharing anything beyond information.”

He acknowledged that the Bush Administration wants “to move past the ABM treaty.” If the Russians are serious about missile defenses, they will have to accept that “the ABM treaty is out of date and has to be changed,” he said.

Although the opening for the latest Administration approach to win Moscow approval for “Star Wars” came from Yeltsin in a January speech to the United Nations, he cautioned that nothing should be done to undermine the present nuclear balance, in which the United States and the former Soviet states essentially have no ballistic missile defenses. He added that the ABM treaty must not be destroyed in the process.

The Administration, nonetheless, declared Yeltsin’s words a “tremendous breakthrough” and responded by immediately offering to share early-warning information, discuss possible technology exchanges and develop a concept for a global ballistic missile defense system. It is this last point that Bush will actively pursue with Yeltsin in June.

Such a defense system, Hadley told the House Armed Services Committee panel, would increase the Russians’ ability to defend against “threats that exist on their borders,” an apparent reference to the possibility of attacks by China, Iran or Iraq with relatively short-range missiles.

Consultations on the concept of a defensive system have begun with U.S. allies such as Britain and France, whose own offensive missiles might be neutralized by the proposed system, Hadley said. Discussions must also be held with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other former Soviet republics.

“We view the June summit between President Bush and President Yeltsin as an opportunity to obtain agreement upon and movement toward implementing a global ballistic missile defense concept,” he concluded.

Times staff writer Doyle McManus in Washington contributed to this article.