START-II a boost to Putin

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, APRIL 14. The Russian Parliament has ratified the START- II nuclear arms reduction treaty, seven years after it was signed by Russia and the United States and four years after the U.S. Congress approved the pact.

The Lower House, State Duma, voted 288 to 133 to approve the treaty, which calls for halving U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals to a maximum of 3,500 warheads by 2007. Communists and their allies, Agrarians, opposed the treaty, saying it would fatally weaken Russia and give the United States a huge military advantage, but leftists had lost majority in the Lower House in the last elections in December. The treaty will now go to the Upper House, the Federation Council, which is certain to approve it as early as next week.

Ratification of START-II is a major political boost to Russia's President-elect, Mr. Vladimir Putin, ahead of his first foreign trip to Britain this weekend. Mr. Putin has demonstrated his full control over the Russian Parliament, which puts him in favourable contrast to his predecessor, Mr. Boris Yeltsin, whose eternal conflict with the Lower House blocked many legislative initiatives of the Kremlin. Approval of START-II gives Moscow a new bargaining point in opposing Washington's pressure to modify the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty to allow the U.S. to deploy a national missile defence system.

START-II also opens the way to negotiations on deeper cuts in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals under a START-III accord.

Advocates of START-II argued that Russia needed the treaty more than the U.S. did, because Russian ageing ballistic missiles were being phased out even faster than envisaged by START-II as their guaranteed service life ran out.

``Ratification of the treaty will enable Russia to maintain its deterrent potential,'' Mr. Putin told deputies shortly before the vote today. ``If START-II is not ratified Russia will lag behind the U.S. in retaliation capability by a factor of 15.'' At the same time, he warned that Russia would pull out of all nuclear and conventional arms control agreements if the United States does not adhere to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

``I want to stress that in this case we will withdraw not only from the START II treaty, but from the whole system of treaties on limitation and control of strategic and conventional weapons,'' Mr. Putin said.

Along with START-II, Russian deputies approved a statement that reserved Russia's right to withdraw from START-II if the U.S. violated the ABM treaty by deploying a national missile defence.

Critics of START-II said there was no chance the treaty would be implemented because Washington was certain to go ahead with its plan to build a national ABM system.

``The strategic parity between Russia and the United States will cease to exist if we implement START II and the United States deploys its anti-ballistic missile defence,'' Mr. Ivan Safranchuk, an arms control expert, cautioned.

However, proponents of START-II said Russia's new Topol-M ballistic missile was capable of overcoming any ABM system the U.S. could build.

``It is always more promising to build offensive rather than defensive systems,'' said Mr. Roman Popkovich, the President's adviser on defence affairs. ``One can always build attack weapons that will penetrate defence systems.''

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