U.S. Offers Russia Proposal to Renegotiate Missile Pact

The Clinton administration has offered to help Russia complete a large missile-tracking radar installation if Moscow agrees to renegotiate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to enable the U.S. to build a national missile defense system, administration officials said Saturday.

The proposal, which Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott outlined to the Russians in a series of high-level meetings, also includes an offer to give Moscow access to data from U.S. early-warning radar installations showing the full trajectory of missile launches. The two countries also could collaborate on some satellite systems.

The discussions, which have been underway for several weeks, represent an intensified effort by the White House to persuade Russia to make modest changes in the 1972 ABM treaty to allow the U.S. to build and deploy a national missile defense system, as Republicans in Congress have been demanding.

Under the ABM treaty, Washington may not deploy such a system--which would use high-technology missiles to shoot down incoming missiles aimed at the United States. Moscow has adamantly opposed changing the original ABM treaty language, and the Russian parliament is extremely suspicious of U.S. motives.

President Clinton sent Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin a letter in January asking Moscow to agree to begin talks on permitting such changes, and Talbott has met with senior Russian officials several times, most recently in Helsinki, Finland, last week, U.S. officials confirmed. But Moscow has not formally responded to the U.S. offer.

Officials said the administration’s behind-the-scenes effort has taken on new urgency in the wake of the Senate’s rejection last week of the 152-nation Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would prohibit underground testing of nuclear weapons and strengthen international monitoring to help detect any violations.

The offer was reported in early editions of today’s New York Times and confirmed by Clinton administration officials.

The administration has said that it will decide in June whether to move ahead with the first phase of the national missile defense system, scheduled for 2005, which would be composed of about 100 missile interceptors based in Alaska. A second phase, in 2010, would involve deployment of another 100 interceptors at other locations.

The administration has been trying to persuade Russian officials that the two countries have a mutual interest in deploying stronger defenses against missile attacks by “rogue” nations such as North Korea and Iran, which are developing missiles capable of hitting either Russia or the United States.

The missile-tracking station in Russia that the United States has offered to help complete is near Irkutsk, a Siberian city. The facility is designed to cover much of northern Asia, including North Korea, and parts of the North Pole region. The Russians began construction of the station, but the work was suspended, possibly because of the cost.

It was not immediately clear whether the Russian government ultimately would go along with the new U.S. offer, but administration officials have been encouraged by Moscow’s apparent willingness to listen.

At the same time, the administration has cut back the scope of the alterations in the ABM treaty that it wants the Russians to discuss, limiting it to only modest changes required to permit deployment of a national missile defense system. In contrast, Republicans are pressing the White House to renegotiate the entire treaty.

Administration officials said any serious U.S. financial aid to help Russia complete the radar-tracking system and begin other projects easily could run into tens of millions of dollars.

The offer is part of a list of several potential areas of cooperation that the administration has presented to the Russians, U.S. officials said. It also has offered to pave the way for joint computer simulations of antimissile systems. And it has suggested cooperative efforts in deploying satellite systems.

The latest effort is not the first time that the United States has offered to share radar technology with the Russians. Late in his administration, former President Bush began preliminary talks about sharing data on missile launches. And Clinton has been exploring similar opportunities since late last winter.

Administration officials said the new posture reflects changes in the missile threat against the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and the acquisition of longer-range missiles by countries such as North Korea, Iran and China.