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Colin Powell: US May Drop ABM Treaty
The United States will break free from a cornerstone arms control agreement with Russia when US technology makes it possible to build an effective missile defense, Bush administration officials said Sunday.
"We will get out of the constraints of the treaty when those constraints do not allow us to move forward with our technology," Secretary of State Colin Powell said on "Fox News Sunday."
Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, echoed themes that President Bush stressed during his just-completed trip to Europe. It ended with a meeting Saturday in Slovenia with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose government strongly opposes the idea of a missile shield.
So far, Powell said, no test of a US missile defense system has violated the treaty's restrictions.
"There will come a point in time ... when you run into a specific prohibition contained in the treaty," Powell said on ABC's "This Week."
"At that point we're going to have to find a way to remove that prohibition, remove that constraint. And it may involve removing the treaty as an obstacle to development."
Powell said the precise means and exact timing of such a major shift in US policy have yet to be determined.
He repeated that Bush believes "we can't allow ourselves to be stopped by the constraints of a treaty that is almost 30 years old, was designed for a different strategic situation in a different world."
"We believe it's time to move into a new era," Rice said on NBC's "Meet the Press." She described the treaty as a leftover from an era marked by "implacable hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union."
Powell and Rice also said that Putin wants to keep talking to the administration about US missile defense aspirations. "There may be opportunities to move forward," Powell said.
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