Europe

Documents & Texts from the Washington File

13 February 2009
United States Wants to Consult with Russia on Missile Defense

By Merle David Kellerhals Jr.
Staff Writer

Washington — The United States wants to consult with its NATO partners and with Russia to determine if a cooperative approach to missile defense in Europe can be developed, says Under Secretary of State William Burns.

“We are also open to the possibility of cooperation with Russia, with our NATO partners on new missile defense configurations which can take advantage of assets that each of us has,” Burns said February 13 in an interview with the Interfax news agency in Moscow. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow confirmed the text of the interview, according to the Reuters news agency.

Burns added that the United States will continue to consult with the Czech Republic and Poland on plans to locate a limited missile defense system in the two NATO-partner countries. The system would help protect U.S. allies from rogue nations that may develop intercontinental missile systems. Both North Korea and Iran have been working to develop nuclear capabilities.

The United States has developed plans, though construction has not begun, to locate 10 silo-based interceptor missiles in Poland and an advanced radar tracking system in the Czech Republic at a cost of approximately $4.5 billion. It will be similar to a system the United States has been developing at Fort Greely, Alaska, though the European system is very limited in capabilities. The target date for completion is 2013.

Burns said that as the United States pursues the issue of missile defense, “we obviously have to take into account a number of factors – whether the system works and whether it’s cost-effective, and what’s the nature of the threat.”

“If through strong diplomacy with Russia and our other partners we can reduce or eliminate that threat, it obviously shapes the way at which we look at missile defense.”

Burns said initial conversations between President Obama, who took office less than a month ago, and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have been constructive.

“We do believe, as President Obama has emphasized, that we have before us an important opportunity to reset our relations on a more productive plane,” Burns said. “In recent years, quite often our mutual frustrations have tended to obscure our mutual interest.”

It does not mean the United States and Russia will not have disagreements occasionally, but it means the United States is committed to taking advantage of the moment of opportunity and the common interests between the two nations, he said.

“One clear concrete example is nuclear cooperation,” he said.

Since Russia and the United States possess 95 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenal, Burns said, it has become critical that the two set a good example for the world in how they manage and reduce remaining nuclear stockpiles.

“The administration of President Obama is committed to negotiating a legally binding follow-on agreement to START,” Burns said. “An agreement that preserves a strong verification of the regime and an agreement that aims at further reduction of our nuclear arsenals beyond the levels of the Moscow Treaty.”

START-1 — known as the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty — is an agreement between the United States and the former Soviet Union, signed in 1991, that limits both nations to no more than 6,000 strategic or long-range nuclear warheads and limits the number of delivery vehicles — such as bombers, land-based missiles and submarine-based missiles — to 1,600 each. The treaty is set to expire December 5, 2009.

“We expect the new [U.S.] administration to maintain constructive cooperation with us so that the START Treaty can be preserved and strengthened, rather than weakened, after December 2009,” Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov told reporters after attending a U.N. Security Council meeting in New York on December 17, 2008.

AFGHANISTAN AND ECONOMIC ISSUES

Burns said Obama and Medvedev will talk further about Afghanistan, where both nations have common interests. “Both the United States and Russia have an interest in ensuring that Afghanistan does not become a platform for the export of violent extremism from which both of us have suffered,” he said.

Both countries’ economies have been seriously affected by the current global financial crisis, and both have an important role to play in addressing that challenge, Burns said.

Obama and Medvedev are scheduled to meet on the sidelines of the G20 major economies summit in London April 2. Secretary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are scheduled to meet with Lavrov and Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov in what is called the 2+2 talks in mid-March.

What foreign affairs actions should President Obama consider? Comment on America.gov’s blog.

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