Putin, Clinton agree to bridge differences over missile defense

Countries to cooperate on global missile center

June 4, 2000
Web posted at: 12:52 p.m. EDT (1652 GMT)

In this story: Protesters at U.S. Embassy Unprecedented U.S.-Russian agreement Agreement to dispose plutonium Saturday summit session cordial and businesslike RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

MOSCOW -- U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed agreements Sunday in Moscow to tackle new threats to global stability.

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Clinton and Putin conceded remaining differences on missile-defense systems after two days of summit talks, but pledged to work toward a compromise. The United States wants to deploy an anti-missile shield to ward off attacks from what it calls "rogue states," such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

But Russia says the proposal violates the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, which the United States wants to amend to allow the missile shield. The two leaders issued a joint "statement of principles" that Clinton described as "an attempt to bring our positions closer together."

Putin and Clinton agreed to try to make the ABM treaty -- signed by Russia and the United States in 1972 -- more effective.

Russia has proposed a "theater-based" joint missile system, near nations that may pose threats. The United States opposes this system as ineffective and because it most likely would be based in Russia, raising U.S. security concerns.

The two leaders also signed an agreement to permanently dispose of 68 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium -- enough to make 8,000 Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs.

Russian negotiators have opposed the U.S.-proposed missile shield. "The Russians don't believe that the so-called 'rogue nations' represent a real threat to the United States," Keith Bush of the Center for Strategic International Studies, said on CNN Sunday. "They see the Americans as trying to move away from the cornerstone treaty, the 1972 ABM treaty."

In addition, the Russian delegation has said any threat to the United States from so-called rogue nations could be solved diplomatically without such a missile shield. A U.S.-built shield, Moscow said, would only force Russia to build one of its own, taking valuable money away from desperately needed Russian economic reforms and infrastructure investments.

Protest at U.S. Embassy

The environmental activist group Greenpeace staged a small protest against the proposed U.S. missile shield Sunday outside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. The protest was visible to Clinton's motorcade as it passed the protest en route to talks with the Russian leader.

One-on-one talks between Putin and Clinton on Sunday were followed by a larger session with both leaders and several members including each nation's top diplomatic and national security advisers.

Later, Clinton visited a newly reconstructed Russian Orthodox church, Christ the Savior, and appeared on a national radio call-in talk show.

Clinton visits Russian Orthodox Christ the Savior church on Sunday

Unprecedented U.S.-Russian deal

During the summit talks, the United States and Russia worked out final details of an unprecedented agreement to build, in Moscow, a high-tech center designed to share information on global missile launches, several administration officials told CNN.

The center would be designed to provide what is known in arms-control circles as shared early warning data to minimize confusion about missile launches, protecting both nations from the danger of mistaken nuclear missile attacks. The agreement was a follow-up deal to a prior U.S.-Russia plan simply to share information on missile launches.

For the first time, U.S. military personnel would be permanently stationed at a center and work with Russian military personnel to monitor all missile launches, the administration official said.

Both nations operate their own missile-launch detection facilities, but this will be the first jointly manned center. A site for the facility has already been selected and an administration official said it is expected to be in operation within one year.

Agreement to dispose plutonium

In their plutonium agreement, Putin and Clinton pledged to safely and permanently dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium over the next 20 years. This is the first time the two nations have agreed to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium; under previous agreements the focus was on highly enriched uranium.

A Greenpeace environmental activist, wearing a Clinton mask with a missile in its mouth, protested outside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow

The deal comes with a steep price tag: at least $1.75 billion to build facilities to convert the plutonium in Russia. The administration says Clinton will seek support from members of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialized nations, specifically Britain, France, Germany and Japan.

In 1998, the U.S. Congress set aside $200 million to help Russia build such a facility. The United States is expected to seek pledges for the remainder at the July G-8 conference in Okinawa, Japan.

The United States also will need to build new facilities at a projected cost of $4 billion. Congress will have to allocate those funds.

Since 1993, the United States has purchased 500 metric tons of highly-enriched uranium from Russian weapons. The uranium has been blended down and sold as fuel for nuclear reactors. Since 1993, these supplies have accounted for about half the U.S. nuclear fuel needs.

Weapons-grade plutonium comes from nuclear bombs no longer in use. Some has already been removed from warheads while the majority remains to be removed. A metric ton equals 1,000 kilograms. The bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in August of 1945 contained 8 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium.

Analyst Keith Bush says that Russians "see the Americans as trying to move away from the cornerstone treaty, the 1972 ABM treaty"

The United States also was urging Russia during the summit meetings to block transfers of technology to Iran that might be useful in developing nuclear weapons.

Saturday summit session cordial

On Saturday night the first session of the summit was a two-hour, 45-minute working dinner at the Kremlin that U.S. officials described as businesslike and said included discussion of all the major issues on the agenda.

At that meeting, Clinton and Putin discussed economic reform, and the Russian military campaign in Chechnya.

U.S. officials said the leaders largely restated previously expressed positions, but described the talks as good, cordial and businesslike.

Senior White House Correspondent John King, White House Correspondent Major Garrett and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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