U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DAILY PRESS BRIEFING
DPB # 72
TUESDAY, MAY 29, 2001 1:20 P.M.
(ON THE RECORD UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED)
Q: Will Secretary Powell, when he meets Mr. Ivanov, mention the offer,
you know, as expressed by The New York Times about missile defense,
changing the ABM, buying the missile SS-300; is that correct?
MR. REEKER: Well, obviously Secretary Powell will be seeing Foreign
Minister Ivanov in Budapest. They met, as you know, just over a week
ago here in Washington and will continue to discuss those things. I
don't have an agenda for you to share, and there may be more
information available from Secretary Powell's party.
We have talked with friends and allies and with the Russians about a
broad range of areas in terms of potential missile defense related
cooperation. I think just to recap a little bit what we have said
before is that President Bush believes that it is important to move
beyond the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty because it codifies a
relationship based on distrust and mutual vulnerability. We have
discussed the fact that it's no longer 1972 and the world has changed
and that our political relationship between the United States and
Russia has moved forward to new cooperation and, at the same time, we
have new and often unpredictable threats that we face. So it is time
really for our strategic concept and our forces to be brought up to
date.
The President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, have
all made that quite clear that it is in our mutual interest between the
United States and Russia to counter new threats, and there is no reason
that the Russian Government should view our defense efforts as directed
against Russia. So we want to move forward with Russia on a
cooperative basis, and we are committed to moving forward with vigorous
research and development and testing and deploying a program to defend
against that range of threats.
So as I said, we have obviously shared some of these ideas. We have
held discussions. They certainly weren't the last of the discussions,
the many discussions we plan to have on this topic. In terms of
potential cooperation, this could possibly include expanding in terms
of shared early warning and other joint efforts, the possibility of
purchasing components, systems or even whole systems from allies or
friends, and potentially even the Russians.
As you know, the Russians have invested heavily for years in advanced
air defense and missile defense technologies, and some of those may be
of significant value to us in our development and deployment of limited
defenses against today's threats. So we will continue to have those
conversations and look forward to talking with our friends and allies
and with the Russians on them.
Q: May I follow up? About The New York Times items, if you are
planning to buy or purchase the S-300 missile from the Russians, did
you - according to the news items - did you discuss with the Turkey
for the base of this new S-300 missiles?
MR. REEKER: Well, I read those news articles as well, and I think even
the articles indicate that it was certainly premature to say that any
decisions have been made. As I said, those are subjects for
discussion, things we can look at as we move ahead in looking at how we
will develop this and how we will counter the threats we face. But it
is obviously far too early to suggest any specific items or specific
systems, other than to say that we would be looking at the broad range
of possibilities. And obviously, as I said, we will be discussing with
all of our friends and allies, Turkey included, as we move forward on
this.
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