U.S. Exit From ABM Pact Said Near

President Bush is about to give Russia formal notice that the United States will unilaterally withdraw from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which has long been considered by many the cornerstone of nuclear arms control, administration officials said Tuesday.

Bush regards the 1972 accord as a Cold War relic and a hindrance to the development of a missile defense system that he believes would shield America from attacks by “rogue states” or terrorists.

“The time is coming,” one White House official said. The announcement could come in a matter of weeks or perhaps days, another aide suggested. The treaty allows either side to withdraw but requires six months’ notice.

Although missile defense was one of Bush’s top priorities, the administration’s focus has shifted since Sept. 11 to the war on terrorism, leading to speculation that work toward a missile defense system would be delayed. But the likelihood of the ABM decision apparently reflects Bush’s desire to go ahead with new tests.

The announcement would come at a time when the U.S. and Russia are cooperating closely against terrorism and when Bush and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin are developing a strong personal relationship. The two presidents agree on many issues, including plans by each country to slash its arsenal of offensive nuclear weapons by up to two-thirds.

But the leaders continue to disagree strongly about the value of the ABM treaty.

After talks in Shanghai in October, Bush called the accord “dangerous,” while Putin described it as “an important element of stability” in the post-Cold War era.

U.S. tests planned for the next six months would violate technical terms of the ABM treaty.

“We’re really bumping up against those restrictions now,” said Baker Spring, a defense policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy center in Washington.

The administration hopes to begin constructing a command and testing facility in Alaska next spring. Such a facility could violate the treaty because it would be designed to test a system covering the whole country.

Tests of interceptor rockets do not violate the accord, which allows each country to deploy up to 100 such rockets to defend either its capital or an offensive missile facility. Such tests technically are explained as an attempt to update rockets for the sort of system that is permitted.

Bush himself delivered a strong hint of his intentions Tuesday during a speech at the Citadel, a military college in Charleston, S. C. He made another impassioned case for a missile defense system, citing the terrorist attacks three months ago as a rationale.

“The attacks on our nation made it even more clear that we need to build limited and effective defenses against a missile attack,” Bush told the cadets.

Bush has been promoting a new “strategic framework” between the United States and Russia and has said the ABM treaty has no place in such a relationship.

But Russia believes that the pact ensures stability in the nuclear era. If neither country maintains a comprehensive defense against nuclear missile attack, Russia contends, each would probably refrain from launching such an attack.

The U.S. withdrawal could cause a rare but significant crack in the domestic support the president has enjoyed in the conduct of foreign policy since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Asked about the reports of an imminent U.S. withdrawal from the treaty, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) told CNN on Tuesday: “That is not a good idea. It would be a real setback for U.S. defense and foreign policy.”

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said: “Unilaterally abandoning the ABM treaty would be a serious mistake. The administration has not offered any convincing rationale for why any missile defense tests it may need to conduct would require walking away from a treaty that has helped keep the peace for the last 30 years.”

News of Bush’s intentions came only a day after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell conferred in Moscow with Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov. He made little significant progress in overcoming their opposition to a U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty.

Still, Ivanov indicated in Moscow on Monday that a U.S. withdrawal might not provoke a Russian reprisal.

“The positions of the sides remain unchanged,” Ivanov said during a joint news conference with Powell.

In arguing anew his case for a missile defense system, Bush at the Citadel offered a specific scenario.

“Suppose the Taliban and the terrorists had been able to strike America or important allies with a ballistic missile. Our coalition would have become fragile, the stakes in our war much, much higher,” the president said, adding, “We must protect Americans and our friends against all forms of terror, including the terror that could arrive on a missile.”

Bush noted that the United States conducted “another promising test” of missile defense technology last week.

“For the good of peace, we’re moving forward with an active program to determine what works and what does not work. In order to do so, we must move beyond the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, a treaty that was written in a different era, for a different enemy,” the president said.

“America and our allies must not be bound to the past. We must be able to build the defenses we need against the enemies of the 21st century,” he said.

*

Times staff writers Norm Kempster and Nick Anderson contributed to this report.