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Bush Dumps ABM Treaty Chuck Noe, NewsMax.comPresident Bush has told Russia that the United States is withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans testing of missile defense systems, officials said Tuesday. In the next few days he will announce the decision, invoking a clause in the 1972 treaty that requires the United States and Russia to give six months' notice before abandoning the accord, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. Some experts say the pact has been void for years because Washington signed it with the now-defunct Soviet Union. The highest-ranking military officer ever to defect from Russia to the United States, NewsMax.com's Col. Stanislav Lunev, has reported Moscow's repeated violations of the treaty. AP reported: "With the decision, Bush takes the first step toward fulfilling a campaign pledge to develop and deploy an anti-missile system that he says will protect the United States and its allies, including Russia, from missiles fired by rogue nations. Bush has said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks heightened the need for such a system." Russian President Vladimir Putin told Bush in October talks that U.S.-Russian relations would not suffer if Bush withdrew from the treaty. The federal officials quoted by AP said Bush's decision was prompted in part by the Pentagon's wish to conduct missile defense tests that would violate the ABM Treaty. According to CNN, two top advisers to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin - Sergei Karaganov and former Duma member Vyacheslav Nikonov - said Secretary of State Colin Powell told Putin of Bush's intentions after meetings this week in Moscow. Bush defended his position anew during a national security speech Tuesday at the Citadel in Charleston, S.C. "Last week we conducted another promising test of our missile defense technology. For the good of peace, we're moving forward with an active program to determine what works and what does not work. In order to do so, we must move beyond the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a treaty that was written in a different era, for a different enemy," Bush said. "America and our allies must not be bound to the past. We must be able to build the defenses we need against the enemies of the 21st century," he said. In Moscow, Powell said the two nations were near agreement on drastic cuts in long-range nuclear arsenals but still differed over missile defense. Opponents of missile defense complain of the price and say it will spark a new arms race.
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