RUSSIA SUCCESSFULLY TEST-LAUNCHES 3 MISSILES AS STAR WARS DISPUTE HEATS UP Russia has successfully launched three strategic missiles amid a growing dispute over Washington's insistence on deploying an anti- missile defense system in space. Just two days before a visit to Moscow of NATO secretary general George Robertson, Russia fired strategic missiles from a nuclear submarine, a missile launching base in the north of the country and a strategic bomber in flight. The tests come amid a rise in tone of the Moscow-Washington dispute over the U.S. government's Star Wars project and over U.S. accusations that Russia is providing missile technology to third countries. That charge was reiterated Thursday by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in what Moscow says is a groundless effort to justifyWashington's Star Wars program. The Russian Defense Ministry stated Friday that Washington is about to unleash an arms race worse than during the Cold War. Russian General Leonid Ivashov, director of the Russian Defense Ministry's International Cooperation Department, said that if Star Wars is deployed the proliferation of ballistic missiles technology will be a worse version than during the Cold War because, he added, in order to compete with the United States the most delirious ideas concerning that technology will have to be tested.
