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US Defense Secretary Vows to "Move Beyond" ABM Treaty
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday that it is time for the US to "move beyond" the 1972 ABM treaty to clear way for the country's missile defense system.
"We're going to have to find a way to get beyond that treaty in the immediate period ahead," Rumsfeld told defense experts here. " The threats are real and anyone who thinks they are not just doesn 't get it."
He said that the treaty is "an impediment" to the robust research and testing of an anti-ballistic missile system.
The defense secretary, however, rejected any suggestion that Washington would break the treaty.
"The United States is not going to violate the treaty," he said, but "there is a provision you can withdraw".
He pointed out that Bush had scheduled a number of meetings with his Russian counterpart. "I think we're going to find a way to reach a mutual understanding," he said.
The U.S. government Thursday outlined a plan to develop missile defense system, including new test facility in Alaska that will be developed in April next year and built in 2003.
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services committee, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz did not describe in detail the proposed test facility.
However, he appeared to be referring to sites in Alaska, which he said would be part of an expanded network of facilities for testing missile defenses.
Wolfowitz said the testing and development activities would collide with the restrictions of the ABM treaty in "months rather than in years."
"We are on a collision course here," he said. "No one is pretending anything about the idea that what we're doing is consistent with that treaty. We've either got to withdraw from it, or replace it."
U.S. State Department has also informed its diplomats around the world that tests of a U.S. anti-missile system soon "will come into conflict with the ABM treaty in months, not years."
A memorandum sent to U.S. embassies and consulates on July 3 said, "The United States needs release from the constraints of the ABM treaty to pursue the most promising technologies and basing modes to field limited, but effective missile defenses."
The Defense Department intends to notify Congress as early as next week that it will begin ground-clearing work in August for a new missile defense test site in Alaska, a senior Pentagon official said Thursday.
The site at Fort Greely will be part of an expanded network of missile defense test facilities that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld hopes will accelerate development of a variety of missile defense technologies.
The Pentagon intends to place between five and 10 silo-based missile interceptors at Fort Greely for testing against target missiles fired from an aircraft and perhaps from ground-based locations.
The United States will conduct the fourth test of a planned missile defense system on July 14.
This will be the first test of the controversial multi-billion U.S. dollar ballistic missile defense for the Bush administration.
The test will involve the same components as the last one -- a dummy warhead and decoy launched from California's Vandenburg Air Force Base and a prototype interceptor with a 54-kilogram "kill vehicle" launched 6,919 kilometers away, from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
Two of three U.S. missile defense tests have failed to prove the system would work, most recently on July 8 last year when an attempt to intercept and destroy a dummy warhead in space failed because the weapon did not separate from the second stage of its liftoff rocket.
Those misses led former U.S. President Bill Clinton on September 1 last year to defer the politically charged decision on when to take the first steps toward deploying a national missile defense.
The project is estimated to cost as much 60 billion U.S. dollars for the land-based leg of interceptors, radar stations and battle management network.
The previous intercept tests have cost about 100 million dollars each. The Pentagon announced no price tag for the next one.
Arms control experts said that the U.S. missile defense plan, opposed by the international community, will not only spark a new arms race, but also threaten world peace and security, and stimulate nuclear proliferation.
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