No Time Limit Put on Pact, U.S. Says

A top State Department official denied Wednesday that the Bush administration had issued an ultimatum to Russia stating when the U.S. would withdraw from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty.

But Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton reiterated at a news conference here that the U.S. will pull out of the treaty “sooner rather than later” if no agreement is reached with Russia.

Reports on Tuesday that American officials had issued a deadline for Moscow to agree on the treaty’s future or face unilateral U.S. withdrawal from the pact caused a flurry of denials from U.S. officials.

A Russian Foreign Ministry statement said that, after several days of talks between Bolton and Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov, Moscow continues its strong opposition to the scrapping of the ABM Treaty.

Asked whether the Americans had set a deadline, Bolton said, “No, we did not, and accounts to the contrary are mistaken. I didn’t say that to the Russians, and I wouldn’t have said it in an interview.”

The Bush administration is moving ahead to develop a missile defense shield, which it says is necessary to protect the United States from missile attacks by terrorists or “rogue” nations. Such a system would violate the treaty.

U.S. and Russian officials have been searching in intensive talks for a way around the impasse concerning the treaty but remain far apart.

“We’ve said on repeated occasions that we expect to bump up against the limits of the ABM Treaty in a matter of months and not years. By definition, months and not years means 23 months or less,” Bolton said, reiterating the formula U.S. officials have used before.

Either side would have to give six months’ notice before withdrawing from the treaty.

In Crawford, Texas, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer also told reporters Wednesday that no U.S. deadline had been set. Fleischer declined to say that the U.S. would not announce this year its intention to withdraw from the treaty.

Presidents Bush and Vladimir V. Putin are scheduled to meet in Texas in November. The reports of an unofficial U.S. deadline were sparked by comments Bolton made Tuesday in an interview with the Echo of Moscow radio station that the presidents would be disappointed if the negotiators had not produced something for them to consider when they meet.

“But we don’t consider it an artificial deadline. And we’re going to make as much progress as we can, and we’ll see what happens,” he said in the radio interview.

The Russian news agency Interfax quoted a Russian official Wednesday as saying that the Americans had indicated that they would announce their withdrawal from the pact in October or November. But Bolton denied the report.

Vladimir P. Lukin, deputy speaker of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, said on ORT television: “We don’t intend to accept any ultimatums. If the United States is in a hurry, it is their private business. We are not in a hurry.”

Bolton said after Wednesday’s talks that good progress had been made. However, he could point to only minor advances, including that the Russians were no longer dismissive of the U.S. view that “rogue” nations pose a serious threat of launching missiles.

He said some Moscow officials had acknowledged in recent days that their nation faced a greater threat of attack from some of those nations than from the U.S.

Bolton said American officials would not agree to ceilings on the number of interceptor rockets Washington could deploy as part of a missile defense shield and suggested that the system could be deployed even before the development and testing were completed if the U.S. faced a military crisis.

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Times staff writer Edwin Chen in Crawford, Texas, contributed to this report.