Russians Optimistic About Arms Cuts

Officials in Russia voiced optimism Wednesday that Moscow and Washington can agree to steep, legally binding nuclear arms reductions in time for an accord to be signed during President Bush’s planned visit to the country in May.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov said he welcomed remarks from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who had confirmed Tuesday that the United States is working toward putting proposed arms cuts into a written agreement, either in a protocol signed by both countries’ presidents or a full-fledged treaty.

“If Russia agrees with the United States on the radical reduction of strategic offensive weapons, all countries . . . will support the agreements,” Ivanov said.

But one Foreign Ministry official, briefing journalists on condition of anonymity, cautioned that difficult negotiations could still be ahead because Russia wants to ensure that any arms reductions by the United States would be irreversible.

That runs counter to the wishes of some U.S. experts, who believe that the United States should simply warehouse the missiles covered by any accord and retain the flexibility to put them back into service in an emergency.

Ivanov said an agreement would be a step forward in U.S.-Russian relations and would show that both countries are still on track to keep their arms-control commitments.

He pointed out that when Russian President Vladimir V. Putin visited Bush at his Texas ranch in November, the two leaders agreed to a new “framework” of strategic relations, including a reduction of their nuclear arsenals to between 1,700 and 2,000 warheads within 10 years.

Although Bush had originally proposed that the reductions be an unwritten promise between two states that are no longer Cold War enemies but friends, Putin held out for some document that would bind the United States to a specific target.

Ivanov reiterated that position Wednesday, saying, “A clear understanding was reached that agreements on this must be legally binding on the parties.”

A written agreement is important to Putin because he can use it to show hard-liners in the Russian military that Moscow has received something in return for its recent concessions to the United States.

Russia has been a strong backer of the United States in its war against terrorism and has quietly acceded to the introduction of U.S. troops into Central Asia--an area that once was part of the Soviet Union and that the Russian military establishment still considers part of its strategic sphere.

Some hard-liners also believe that Moscow has gone along too quietly with U.S. plans to withdraw from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, an agreement that Russia continues to support. The United States has said it is exercising its right to withdraw from the ABM treaty in order to be free to pursue testing and construction of a proposed national missile defense.

In remarks carried by the Interfax news agency, a senior Russian military official praised Powell for affirming the commitment to an accord on arms reduction.

“Despite differences on a number of issues, the accord, or series of accords on mutual cuts to strategic offensive weapons, will, I hope, be worked out by the spring of 2002,” said Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the first deputy chief of staff of the Russian armed forces.

Baluyevsky also dismissed suggestions that have circulated here that Russia should take some concrete steps to punish the United States for its move to quit the ABM treaty.

“We could increase the number of deployed missiles and warheads that they carry, but that would be a road to nowhere, a new round of the arms race,” Baluyevsky said. “Russia doesn’t need that, and it wouldn’t take that path.”