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ONLINE NEWS AND VIEWS

"Sixteenth Year of the War - The Melian Conference - Fate of Melos"
http://www.fas.org/man/melian.htm
Thucydides "The History of the Peloponnesian War" ca. 431 B.C. Translated by Richard Crawley - Fifth Book - Chapter XVII " ... you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."

Clinton, Yeltsin Agree on Broad Arms Cuts
http://wp2.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1997-03/22/091L-032297-idx.html
Thomas W. Lippman
Washington Post - Saturday, March 22, 1997; page A01
"HELSINKI, March 21 -- President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin reached agreement today on a surprising array of security and economic issues, including further sharp reductions in the two nations' nuclear arsenals ... Yeltsin, in an unexpected move, agreed that all the anti-missile systems now under development by the U.S. military were admissible under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
... The agreements that were announced after eight hours of talks left Clinton's senior foreign policy advisers almost giddy over what they had accomplished. .... The agreement would permit testing and deployment of defenses against missiles with a velocity up to 5 kilometers (3 miles) per second and a flight range of 3,500 kilometers (2,170 miles). Previously, Russian fears of U.S. technological advances had stalled negotiations on any target velocity exceeding 3 kilometers (1.86 miles) per second."

U.S.-Russia Talks End in Arms Breakthrough
http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/NATION/t000026018.html
ELIZABETH SHOGREN
The Los Angeles Times - March 22, 1997
"The breakthrough Friday came, Bell said, when the United States pledged to consult with Russia as its new technologies for fast antimissile systems emerge. As soon as the U.S. side agreed to these consultations, the Russian side dropped several of the restrictions that it had been demanding, and the deal was made.
A key to the agreement, Bell added, was that the Russian government seemed to finally believe that the Americans want the new antimissile defense system to protect their troops from shorter- and medium-range missiles, such as Iraqi Scuds, and not to direct them at Russian intercontinental missiles."

NEWS ANALYSIS Yeltsin Leaves a Winner Despite NATO Impasse
http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/NATION/t000026054.html
By CAROL J. WILLIAMS
The Los Angeles Times - March 22, 1997
"Yeltsin vowed to try to push the unratified START II disarmament treaty through the Duma, Russia's contentious lower house of parliament, so that negotiations can begin on even deeper cuts in the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. "I expect that the state Duma will make a decision after hearing my advice on the matter," Yeltsin confirmed at a post-summit news conference. Russian journalists tittered with laughter at his cautious wording, which gave no hint of the low expectations in Moscow that the Communist-dominated Duma would act to enhance Yeltsin's foreign policy record."

Yeltsin Redux: Now for the Hard Part, at Home
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/russia-us-assess.html
By STEVEN ERLANGER '
The New York Times - March 22, 1997
"Even bolstered by an agreement about missile defenses that seems to answer some of the Russian legislators' concerns about potential American defenses against strategic missiles, Start 2 may be a hard sell.
Some lawmakers have also linked Start 2 ratification to NATO expansion ... Clinton's aides were especially relieved that despite the sharp disagreement over NATO, Yeltsin was willing to discuss important bilateral business on economics and arms control, agreeing in principle to a deeper cut in strategic nuclear warheads than most people thought possible five years ago, agreeing that planned American missile defenses were allowable under an earlier treaty and trying to help Clinton get a chemical weapons treaty through the Senate."

Destroy Warheads? This Is the START Of Something New
http://wp2.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1997-03/22/048L-032297-idx.html
R. Jeffrey Smith and Bradley Graham
Washington Post - Saturday, March 22, 1997; page A01
"If it becomes a treaty, the outline of a new strategic arms agreement announced yesterday by the United States and Russia would for the first time try to make nuclear cuts irreversible by guaranteeing that at least some of the old warheads are destroyed instead of stockpiled for possible future use.... "This is really quite significant," Robert S. Norris, a nuclear weapons specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said of the plan to require "transparency" of warhead destruction.."

A Useful Helsinki Summit
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/editorial/22sat2.html
EDITORIAL - The New York Times - March 22, 1997
"The most encouraging advance in Helsinki was agreement on a set of guidelines for a third nuclear weapons reduction treaty.... Regrettably, the Clinton Administration still resists beginning formal negotiations until Russia's Parliament ratifies the previous weapons reduction agreement, signed in 1993 ..."