U.S. Seeks to Placate China on Missiles

The Bush administration intends to launch an intensive dialogue with China about strategic nuclear weapons, hoping to persuade the Beijing government that U.S. missile defense plans pose no threat to Chinese security, a high-ranking White House official said Saturday.

“We are going to tell the Chinese that the missile defense shield is not aimed at them and they shouldn’t feel threatened by it,” National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said in an interview. “We are going to give them the same briefing that we have given everyone else.”

Although Rice said the administration will not make any concessions to win Chinese approval of its antimissile program, she said the talks will elevate the strategic dialogue between the two countries and acknowledge that China’s views must be taken into account.

“They are an interested party,” she said. “We are clearly going to intensify our discussions with them in advance of the president’s trip” to China late next month.

In the past, Sino-American nuclear arms discussions have seldom gone beyond a generalized warning from the United States against Chinese proliferation.

Although China is one of the five acknowledged nuclear powers under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Chinese arsenal contains only a handful of missiles in contrast to the thousands of warheads deployed by the United States and Russia. America has never considered it necessary to conduct the sort of detailed arms control negotiations with China that it has conducted with the Kremlin for the past 30 years.

But Rice denied a report by the New York Times that the administration will try to overcome Chinese objections to the U.S. nuclear defense plan by telling Beijing that the United States does not object to modernization and expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal.

“That is simply not going to happen,” Rice said. “We will tell them that a further nuclear buildup isn’t good for peace and stability in the region.”

The New York Times account, posted on its Web site Saturday, quoted unnamed administration officials as saying that the administration will drop its objections to a Chinese nuclear buildup as a way of persuading Beijing that the U.S. missile defense plan is aimed only at so-called rogue states and is not intended to neutralize China’s nuclear force.

The centerpiece of the administration’s plan is a missile shield that would be designed to shoot down a few incoming missiles. Administration officials insist that it would not be extensive enough to defend against large nuclear attacks launched by Russia or China.

Critics of the administration’s strategic defense plans have long argued that if the United States deploys an antimissile system, Russia and China will respond by enlarging their offensive missile arsenals to make sure they can overwhelm the defenses.

Rice said the Chinese have been engaged in a steady nuclear modernization program for some time, apparently unrelated to U.S. missile defense plans. Although she said the administration will try to persuade Beijing that such a buildup will ultimately prove counterproductive, she did not seem to be particularly alarmed by it.

“We realize that there is a Chinese military buildup that has been going on for some time,” she said.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell also has said that the United States expects China to go ahead with its military modernization plans.

U.S. officials say that China’s nuclear buildup could ultimately cause Beijing to resume nuclear testing. Both China and the U.S. have signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Although the Bush administration has indicated that it may eventually decide to resume testing to ensure the reliability and safety of its existing nuclear arsenal, it could be expected to strongly oppose a resumption of Chinese tests. For the time being, the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France are observing a voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests.