STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Get a low APR NextCard Visa in 30 seconds! 1. Fill in the brief application 2. Receive approval decision within 30 seconds 3. Get rates as low as 2.99% Intro or 9.99% Ongoing APR and no annual fee! Apply NOW! http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/NextCard ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Rumsfeld Says ABM May Have Valuable Links http://news.excite.com/news/r/010609/18/news-arms-baltics-rumsfeld-dc Updated: Sat, Jun 09 6:20 PM EDT By John Acher TURKU, Finland (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wrapped up a tour of Europe on Saturday, saying intricate links between various arms control regimes should not be allowed to prevent development of new Western defenses for the 21st century. Rumsfeld's remarks came after he had earlier said he had made progress in gaining European understanding for the Bush administration's proposal for a planned U.S. strategic anti-missile defense system. Russia and Washington's European allies are concerned the U.S. plans could wreck the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, a pillar of Cold War deterrence that severely curbed the right of both sides to defend against missiles. Russia has said the ABM treaty is a key part of a structure of some 30 arms control agreements. Rumsfeld acknowledged that the ABM was linked to a complex array of other treaties. "I am not an expert. I do not know that whole fabric of treaties that have evolved over the decades and how they legally interconnect with one another," Rumsfeld said. "You would need a roadmap that looked like a plate full of spaghetti to understand it." "Is it possible that there is something in some treaty that has a relevant 21st-century value to some other treaty? Answer: Undoubtedly," he told reporters. "Am I saying that therefore it ought to be left aside? No." PROPOSALS HAD "GAINED UNDERSTANDING" Rumsfeld said the U.S. plans for a missile defense, which are part of the Republican administration's call for "a new architecture" for security, including arms monitoring and verification systems, had gained understanding outside the United States. "There is an understanding of our desire to move beyond the ABM treaty toward a framework that fits the 21st century," Rumsfeld told reporters in the Finnish city of Turku after meeting defense ministers from Nordic and Baltic countries. The United States argues a new approach is needed to protect against rogue states as nuclear technology has proliferated. Rumsfeld said there was a need to move beyond Cold War thinking and repeated calls made to NATO defense chiefs and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov this week to join President Bush's team in a new security framework. Ivanov repeated Moscow's attachment to the ABM treaty but agreed there were new threats, including terrorism, and accepted an invitation from Rumsfeld to visit Washington. Rumsfeld said his discussions with Ivanov earlier this week had been "a very good meeting" and that the United States and Russia intended to keep talking about the issues. Rumsfeld said it was not yet clear what any new security setup would look like. "I hate to say because it is work in progress." But he said halting proliferation of nuclear, biological and other arms would be key. "A missile defense is a piece of a much broader set of questions -- offensive nuclear weapons, proliferation and counter-proliferation activities, issues of verification and monitoring. There is a range of things that need to be looked at in toto rather than in isolation," Rumsfeld said. PROLIFERATION A SERIOUS PROBLEM "Proliferation is a very serious problem. The genie is out of the bottle in terms of some very bad stuff -- both chemical and particularly biological, but also nuclear (weapons), and people are going to have very powerful weapons," he said. Defense ministers from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania declined to say if they had been convinced by Rumsfeld's explanation of the need for the system. Finnish Defense Minister Jan-Erik Enestam, who chaired the meeting, said it had been an open exchange of information and was not meant to "persuade anyone about anything." On another key issue in regional security, the possible expansion of NATO membership to more eastern European states, Rumsfeld insisted there would be no connection between that decision, which would also irk Moscow, and missile defense. The alliance would keep an open-door policy, he said, and Russia would have no veto over countries' ambitions to join. The former Soviet states on the Baltic, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, hope to follow Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic into the alliance next year. But Russia is hostile to any NATO expansion, and especially any into the old Soviet Union itself. Rumsfeld's meeting with the Nordic and Baltic defense leaders followed talks earlier in the week with Southeast European defense ministers at Thessaloniki, Greece, and with NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday. Next week Bush will meet EU leaders in Gothenburg, Sweden. Email this story | Printer-friendly version Related Stories Rumsfeld Presses Defense Plan at Baltics Meeting Sat, Jun 09 6:20 AM ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
