The Bush administration formally withdrew yesterday from the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, but skirmishing continued between the administration and congressional Democrats over Bush's missile defense proposal.
The withdrawal from the treaty was set on Dec. 13, when President Bush gave Russia six months' notice that the United States would withdraw to pursue a missile defense system.
_____Live Online_____
•
Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Ivo H. Daalder discussed the argument against President Bush's missile defense plan.
•
Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis Senior Defense Analyst David Tanks discussed the argument in favor of President Bush's missile defense plan.
•
National security analyst Anthony Cordesman discussed the possibilities of a national ballistic missile defense system.
•
Reporter Bradley Graham discussed his Post magazine article on a failed test of the national missile defense system.
|
| |
_____Special Report_____
•
Military: Related articles, Web search, online resources.
|
| |
_____Transcript_____
•
Washington Post foreign editor David Hoffman talked about the Bush-Putin summit, arms control, and the state of Russian-American relations.
|
| |
|
The administration warned it would veto the 2003 defense spending bill unless Congress restores $814 million cut from the missile defense program by the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote to the committee warning that he would recommend that Bush veto the $393 billion spending bill if the full Senate, which takes up the measure soon, does not restore the funding. Bush seeks $7.8 billion next year for missile defenses. The Democratic-controlled committee objected to plans by the administration to increase the secrecy of the testing program.
On Wednesday, 30 Democrats sued Bush, Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell seeking to block the treaty withdrawal. They argued the president cannot pull out of a treaty without Congress's approval.
Ari Fleischer, the president's press secretary, said the lawsuit was "highly likely heading toward dismissal," based on precedents.
Fleischer said it was typical that less information about the project would be made public as it develops. "These programs are going to receive classifications to prevent the information from going to people who would want to use that information against us," he said.
The Defense Department plans to break ground Saturday in Alaska on six underground silos for missile interceptors. Such construction was prohibited under the treaty.
Bush, in a statement formally announcing the withdrawal yesterday, said he would move "as soon as possible" to deploy a missile defense system. "With the treaty now behind us, our task is to develop and deploy effective defenses against limited missile attacks," Bush said. "As the events of September 11 made clear, we no longer live in the Cold War world for which the ABM Treaty was designed."
Meanwhile, an interceptor rocket fired from a Navy ship in the Pacific slammed into a dummy warhead in space yesterday in a successful missile defense test.
The exercise showed a rocket guided by a warship's radar system can hit a medium- or long-range missile under controlled conditions. Pentagon officials said the test would help gather data to guide development of ship-based anti-missile systems.
