Albright Defends U.S. Disarmament Record

Prodded by a coalition of nonnuclear nations, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright defended the Clinton administration record on nuclear disarmament Monday, warning that countries demanding “unrealistic and premature measures” can set back progress.

“We share the frustration many feel about the pace of progress toward a world free of nuclear weapons,” Albright told the opening of a conference at the United Nations reviewing compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. “. . . Unfortunately, none of us has it within our power to create overnight the conditions in which complete nuclear disarmament is possible.

“Far from any radical changes of course, what we need now is more hard work, good faith and patient political will from every country,” she added.

The secretary of State defended U.S. plans to develop a limited system of ground-based interceptors directed against potential missile programs of states such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

In his address to the meeting, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that a decision to deploy national missile defenses “could lead to a new arms race.” He did not specifically mention either President Clinton or Clinton’s consideration of a limited antimissile defense.

The matter of the proposed U.S. missile defense system is expected to be one of the issues on the table when Clinton meets with Russian President-elect Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow on June 4 and 5.

Annan said such defenses could create new incentives for proliferation.

“It is my hope that all states will take great care to weigh these dangers and challenges before embarking on a process which may well reduce, rather than enhance, global security,” the secretary-general said.

Albright said the U.S. plan would be capable at most of handling tens of incoming missiles and is not intended to degrade Russia’s deterrent capacity.

“If the Clinton administration were bent on sabotaging the ABM Treaty and strategic arms control, we have surely gone about it in a strange way--in the open, with care and in consultation not only with Congress but after extensive discussions with our allies in other countries, Russia and China emphatically included,” she said.

Many nations, including Russia and China, object to the U.S. proposal to build a national missile defense system, which would require amendments to the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, signed by the Soviet Union and the United States in 1972.

Russia has warned that a decision to build the U.S. system, which Washington says would be aimed at “rogue” states, would bring back “an era of suspicion and confrontation.”

Albright said the world has changed drastically in the almost three decades since the ABM treaty was signed.

“That treaty has been amended before, and there is no good reason it cannot be amended again to reflect new threats from third countries outside the strategic deterrence regime,” Albright said.

Nations critical of the pace of disarmament charge that nuclear states have not made enough progress.

Mexico’s foreign minister, Rosario Green, speaking on behalf of seven nonnuclear states, pressed the United States and the other nuclear powers to take 5,000 weapons in the U.S. and Russian arsenals off line, to remove warheads from missiles and to renounce the first use of atomic weapons.

“The time has come for more far-reaching action to be taken,” Green said. “. . . Failure to move now or to signal new determination will make these weapon accepted currency.”

Under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which went into force in 1970, only five nations--the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain--are allowed to possess atomic weapons.

So far, 187 countries have ratified the treaty. In 1995, the pact was extended indefinitely, with conferences at five-year intervals designed to assess progress.

Monday’s meeting began a monthlong discussion of issues ranging from nuclear tests by India and Pakistan to establishment of a weapons-free zone in the Middle East.

Annan said that while former nuclear rivals are cooperating to reduce the threat posed by their weapons, and while safeguards have been strengthened, “this is no time for complacency.”

“Nuclear conflict remains a very real and very terrifying possibility at the beginning of the 21st century,” he said. “This is the stark reality confronting you today.”

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Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.