Bush, Putin to Tackle Arms Control at Upcoming Texas Summit

With their get-acquainted meetings behind them, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin will get down to the nitty-gritty of arms control in November at a summit that could determine the future of Bush’s plan to build a national missile defense.

When the two posed Sunday at a multinational summit in Shanghai, they wore silk tunics with knotted Chinese buttons, suggested by their Chinese hosts. By the end of their next summit, to be held at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, they could be garbed in denim--a symbolic shift from ceremonial to work clothes.

The Texas session is likely to focus on real hardware--and specific numbers--as the presidents work on figuring out how the United States can try to build a missile defense system with which the Russians can live. As such, the meeting is already being invested with a weight not attached to the leaders’ three initial conferences.

From the reading of tea leaves in Shanghai came a sense that the two men have made enough progress to get beyond Russia’s long-standing objections to the missile defense plan, while Moscow and Washington move ahead with new reductions in offensive weapons.

If so, the November summit--for which a Russian advance team is now assembling in Washington--will be a crucial step in cementing the increasingly warm relationship between Bush and Putin.

A senior administration official known for taking a hard line toward Russia said after the Shanghai meeting that there was no specific progress on missile defense.

The official, who asked not to be identified because of the highly confidential nature of the discussions, referred to the failure of the two leaders to talk in detail about a reduction of offensive weapons, which the Russians want to go hand in hand with any effort to build a defensive shield.

And Pentagon officials have been unable to work out differences between civilian leaders and the military over the level to which the United States is willing to reduce its nuclear warheads.

Under the current treaty that limits long-range, or strategic, nuclear weaponry, Russia and the United States are limited to 3,000 and 3,500 such warheads, respectively. But as the two countries look beyond the 1993 START II agreement, the United States is expected to propose that the number be cut to below 2,500--perhaps 2,100 or 2,200, arms control experts say.

“We’ll have numbers before Crawford,” the senior Bush aide said, referring to the Texas summit. “But I think a lot will depend on [what happens in] Crawford.”

Putin is scheduled to arrive in Washington on Nov. 12, possibly after a stop in New York, where he may view the destruction caused Sept. 11. He and Bush are scheduled to meet the next day in Washington and then on Nov. 14 at the Bush ranch.

At a news conference the two leaders held Sunday in Shanghai at the end of their third meeting, Putin signaled a readiness to move the relationship forward, differences notwithstanding.

Using the often-stilted language of arms control talks, Putin said it was time to find a way to work out the details of reducing strategic offensive weapons, and to do so in a way that both sides could check.

“Now our task is to develop parameters of such reductions and to design a reliable and verifiable method to reduce nuclear arsenals of Russia and [the] United States,” Putin said.

But the real sticking point is the future of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the 1972 agreement that, as currently read, would be violated if the United States moved further in its effort to design, test and build missile defenses.

“As for ABM-related issues, we also made progress,” the Russian president said. “At least I believe we do have [an] understanding that we can reach agreements, taking into account the national interests of Russia, the United States, and taking into account the necessity to strengthen international stability in this very important area.”

His remarks suggested to Joseph Cirincione, an arms control expert, that Putin is focusing on an agreement that will draw down U.S. offensive weapons while permitting an informal revision of the ABM treaty. That would allow Bush to proceed with the next steps in a missile defense program without new tests or initial construction being considered a violation.

“They’re trying to find this middle ground,” said Cirincione, a senior associate in the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington public policy research organization.

Dimitri K. Simes, director of the Nixon Center, another Washington think tank that focuses on national security, said the two leaders clearly parted company in Shanghai optimistic that, over the next three weeks, their aides could lay the groundwork for progress in Crawford.

At the heart of the upbeat tenor, he said, lies the assessment by Putin, a practical politician, that Russia’s relations with the United States are more important than continuing to raise a536870914ruckus over the ABM treaty.

“He realized being on the wrong side of a peripheral issue does not make sense,” Simes said.

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Times staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report.