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US Charges Russia of Proliferating Dangerous Weapons
United States Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld charged on Thursday that Russia is helping Iran develop a nuclear arms program and aiding other states with dangerous technology, while opposing a US plan to defend itself against missile attack.
"Now that's an awkward position, it seems to me, for them to be in," Rumsfeld said in a television interview.
"I know they make an argument of whether it is proliferation of certain types of weapons. But there is no question that they are working with Iran on their nuclear capability," he added on the PBS Television's The Newshour with Jim Lehrer.
Rumsfeld also charged that Russia was transferring technology to China, Iraq and other countries which have capabilities that could be dangerous to the world -- a charge Moscow has denied.
Rumsfeld was questioned on the program about thus-far unsuccessful efforts by the Bush administration to persuade Russia to drop its opposition to the U.S. plan to develop a missile defense system and Moscow's refusal to agree to changes in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.
That ABM treaty, between the United States and former Soviet Union, forbids national missile defenses by either country.
In talks with Rumsfeld in Moscow, Russian leaders on Monday again rejected a US call for the two nations to jointly abandon the ABM pact.
"Russia is still, I think, captured to a certain extent by the old Cold War mentality and fear and apprehension and concern about the West," the US defense secretary said.
"The United States' position is that the treaty that is concerning us, which is 30 years old, is preventing us from defending the population centers here and our deployed forces and our friends and allies," he said.
"And the Russian position is that they want to be free to have us not develop a ballistic missile defense capability, although they have a missile defense capability around Moscow with nuclear-tipped interceptors right now."
At the same time, Rumsfeld said Russia was adding to US fears about emerging missile threats and weapons of mass estruction from "rogue states" like North Korea, Iran and Iraq.
"That (Russian) position ... is basically: `Look America, you establish a policy of remaining vulnerable to ballistic missiles while we are protected by a missile defense system in Moscow and while we continue to work with other countries, like Iran and Iraq and various other countries, with respect to proliferating some technologies that are not very helpful to the rest of the world'," he said.
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