U.S. Offers Russia Radar Aid if ABM Treaty Altered

The Clinton administration has offered to help Russia complete a key radar site and to share more American radar data if Russia agrees to renegotiate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty so that the United States could build a national missile defense system, a senior administration official said Saturday.

In a project that would cost tens of millions of dollars, the United States would help Russia complete a partially constructed radar near the Siberian city of Irkutsk that is oriented eastward, covering northern Asia, including North Korea, and parts of the North Pole. Russia might also be given access to data from U.S. early-warning radars on the full trajectory of missile launches, and the two countries might collaborate on some satellite systems.

Together with the Senate’s defeat last week of a treaty banning nuclear test explosions, the attempt to modify the 27-year-old ABM treaty is a sign of tremendous ferment in the realm of arms control.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, the advent of new technology and the rise of missile threats from countries such as North Korea, Iraq and Iran are pushing Cold War-era agreements toward obsolescence. Wary of tearing up the entire quilt of agreements that took decades to negotiate, however, the Clinton administration is trying to keep Russia as a partner in the process of developing a system to shoot down incoming missiles.

“We’ve raised with them a number of cooperative activities to show that we see this as a threat that affects both countries,” said a senior administration official. “We don’t see this as anything against Russia, and we’re willing to look at a whole range of cooperative measures that would address the same rogue threat we’re concerned about.”

The offer, made more than a month ago and first reported in the early editions of today’s New York Times, is consistent with earlier statements the administration has made about finding ways to win Moscow’s support for national missile defense. Such a system, administration officials say, would provide a limited defense oriented primarily toward rogue states, not Russia.

American assistance for other radar arrays in the former Soviet Union was also discussed, although the station in Mishelevka, near Irkutsk, was the only one discussed in detail.

Although the Russian government has officially rejected U.S. proposals to renegotiate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, it has nonetheless agreed to listen to American ideas. The latest round of talks took place last week, and the United States has not yet received a Russian response.

To improve the chances that the Russians will go along, the administration decided last month to ask initially for modest changes in the ABM treaty, rather than seeking wholesale revisions, as some Republicans in Congress have advocated.

U.S. negotiators are trying to convince Russian counterparts they have a common interest in guarding against rogue states that have greater and greater capabilities for launching intercontinental missiles capable of hitting either Russia or the United States. The United States believes it would benefit from Russian radar data covering countries such as Iran and North Korea, and believes it can offer valuable information in return.