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Clinton to Leave NMD Decision to Successor
US President Bill Clinton will decide by early September whether to keep the US National Missile Defence on a fast track for 2005 but will leave it for his successor to decide whether and when to begin initial deployment, according to China Daily.
Defence Secretary William Cohen spoke amid growing calls in Congress and from national security specialists in Washington for Clinton to delay making a decision on deploying the controversial $60 billion system until it had been more thoroughly tested.
His comments formally confirmed what has been indicated in official statements for some weeks -- that Clinton has backed off his commitment last year to make a decision on NMD deployment.
In a June 22, 1999, statement, he said: "Next year, we will, for the first time, determine whether to deploy a limited National Missile Defence, when we review the results of flight tests and other developmental efforts, consider cost estimates, and evaluate the threat."
Cohen told reporters that Clinton would simply decide "in either August or early September" whether to let defence contracts in the fall to transfer material and begin clearing land for a new missile defence radar installation in Alaska in the spring.
But even if such contracts are signed, it would be up to the next president -- who will be elected in November and take office in January -- to decide whether to begin construction of the facility on wind-swept Shemya Island, Cohen added.
"All the president would do on this occasion is to decide whether he would want to keep that option open to hit the initial operating capability of 2005," the secretary said during a news conference with Pavol Kanis, defence minister of the Slovak Republic.
TECHNOLOGY CALLED FLAWED
Critics of the controversial missile shield programme, which is bitterly opposed by Russia and China and some of its Western allies, have said that the anti-missile technology is deeply flawed and will not be ready for use in 2005 under a current US plan. The Pentagon says that work must begin next year on the Shemya radar station or the system cannot be ready by 2005.
Two of three US attempts to shoot down missiles over the Pacific since last October have failed.
On Wednesday, 31 Democratic senators, including Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, released a letter to Clinton urging him not to decide on deployment now, saying "we fear that a decision to deploy would imperil, not improve, our national security."
They noted that 50 Nobel laureates and the American Physical Society, which represents 42,000 physicists, had issued statements urging a delay until the system had been properly tested against countermeasures like decoys.
On Tuesday, 61 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to the White House urging Clinton to leave any decision on deployment to his successor.
"We share the judgment of numerous physicists, security experts, and current and former military and government officials who have concluded that the unresolved questions about the system's effectiveness and the decision's impact on the overall national security of the United States cannot be adequately answered this year," the letter said.
COHEN STILL UNDECIDED
Moving to clear up confusion over the National Missile Defence, Cohen said in response to questions that he had not made any decision on what he will recommend to the president by mid-August on whether a missile defence could be ready by 2005.
"If we want to keep that option open, the president could make a decision of saying, 'Let the contracts for the fall,'" Cohen told reporters.
"No construction would begin until next year, and at that point, his successor would be in a position to make(on whether to go ahead)," he added.
"The decision that the president will make during the course of either August or early September would be a recommendation as to whether to continue the process so that his successor would be in a position to have the option to go forward with the actual deployment of the system, beginning with a radar construction in Alaska," Cohen said.
Russia has refused US calls to amend the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty so the United States could go ahead and begin building what it calls a limited defence against future missile attack by states such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq.
But Cohen reiterated on Wednesday that US government lawyers had advised Clinton that the United States would not be in violation of the treaty until actual construction of rails on which the new radar installation would move.
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