[EXCERPTS] PRESS BRIEFING BY SECRETARY OF STATE MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR SANDY BERGER, AND DEPUTY SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY LARRY SUMMERS
THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary (Helsinki, Finland) March 21, 1997
MCCURRY: An all-star cast here to brief you a little bit about the President's very successful summit with President Yeltsin today. I've asked Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to start first. She will be followed by National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, followed by Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers. I also have General Shalikashvili here and Robert Bell who is the Senior Director for the National Security Council for Defense Policy. They're available, too, to either speak or to take any questions you may have on the arms control aspects of today's summit.
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BERGER: ...
Now, the other, second significant mention of this summit has been some substantial breakthroughs in the arms control area. There are three related breakthroughs. One was a firm commitment by President Yeltsin to promptly press for Duma ratification of START II. This commitment by President Yeltsin was facilitated by agreements on two other related matters. One is a set of guidelines or parameters for START III, and the second is, finally, after three years of negotiation, an agreement on ABM-TMD demarkation. That is the line between ABM systems that allows our theater systems to go forward. And let me speak for a moment about both of those statements.
On the START III guidelines that will provide the guidance for negotiations, they provide for reductions to the level of 2,000 to 2,500 warheads. For the first time the parties will be negotiating on actual warhead destruction as opposed to simply systems destruction. There will be a timetable for both START II and START III that, in a sense, mesh together. All of the destruction of systems for START II and START III will be completed by the year 2007, as the President indicated. The deactivation of warheads under START II will be extended one year from the beginning of 2003, the deadline, until the end of 2003, as the President indicated.
Obviously, the START II and START III aspects of this are subject to ratification by both our Senate and by the Duma.
Now, the third very significant agreement that has bedeviled arms control negotiators for, I believe, three or four years and has caused an awful lot of airfare miles on the part of many arms control people is the ABM-TMD issue. And we reached an agreement today which preserves the ABM treaty. Both sides affirm, again, the importance of maintaining the ABM treaty.
It permits all six of our current systems to go forward, unimpeded. It constrains only testing of theater missiles against strategic targets, not something that we have planned, and provides for consultations but no veto through the standing consultative commission in Geneva on new technologies that may be developed in the future, and continued cooperation between the United States and Russia on TMD cooperation -- for example, on sharing early warning information, on joint exercises, on possible joint R&D.
So let me just sum up by trying to state what I think the significance of these two agreements are. In terms of the START guidelines, it means, as the President has said, that within a decade there will be an 80-percent reduction if we are successful in START III of U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear warheads that were deployed at the end of the Cold War just five years ago.
Number two, that will provide greater strategic stability at lower levels and, therefore, reduce the nuclear danger for our peoples and for the entire world.
Number three, we will seek to destroy warheads for the first time -- strategic warheads for the first time of arms control. Four, we'll also address non-strategic nuclear weapons in START III -- that is, tactical nuclear weapons as a separate but related issue. And as I say, the significance of this, in part, is it will enable -- has enabled President Yeltsin to say that he will go forward promptly with ratification of START II.
The significance of the ABM-TMD agreement, I would say basically three -- one, we have demonstrated that the ABM treaty can be maintained as a cornerstone of strategic stability and still be adapted to deal with the very real threat of shorter-range missiles that we seek to deal with through our theater systems.
Second of all, it, as I says, reconfirms that all of our current systems can go forward unimpeded; and third, together with the START III guidelines, removes what has been an obstacle to START II ratification in the Duma.
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Q: I'd like to address a question to Mr. Berger, and perhaps to Bob Bell. As recently as Monday afternoon, quite senior people in the administration were saying that there was no prospect of an ABM-TMD agreement anytime soon. Could you say something about how this came about?
BERGER: I think those same senior officials may have been saying it at 4:00 p.m. this afternoon. I think that this was the issue perhaps that most time was spent on in the summit. Well, a good part of the morning session was spent on the Euro-security issues that Secretary Albright has discussed. They then moved to the START and ABM-TMD issues, which continued in various configurations through the afternoon.
I think, finally, when it became absolutely clear that we could both preserve the ABM system, but also proceed ahead with the six systems that we have under -- that we are proceeding with, that agreement fell into place. I'm not sure that we were expecting all that to happen as we got here, but the negotiations from our perspective were very successful.
Bob, do you want to add anything?
BELL: Mike suggests I just give a very short chronology. This started really three and a half years ago when the Clinton administration in the fall of '93, at the five-year ABM review conference, laid down a comprehensive proposal for demarkation that was based on one simple rule, and that was whether you ever tested a theater missile defense system against a strategic target.
That proposal was not accepted by the Russians, and after a year or two of not much progress, we made a fundamental decision to split the negotiations in half and concentrate on the so-called lower velocity theater missile defense systems where, indeed, we were able to reach agreement, and fully expected that we would be able to sign that and get on with the harder problems that we finally reached resolution on today.
But as those of you who have followed this know, there have been a lot of zigs and zags on this and many previous occasions where we thought that we had agreement to go forward with part one only to find when we got there that the Russians in effect were saying, until we finish the whole problem we're not going to split off part of it.
So going into the last several weeks, really intensive travel, as Sandy said. On this question of the remaining higher velocity systems, we have consistently run into a roadblock wherein the Russians were saying unless an additional set of constraints that were unacceptable to the administration and unacceptable to the chiefs in the military services were added to this demarkation regime, there wouldn't be an agreement on anything; indeed, there wouldn't be an agreement on the START issues and there wouldn't be an agreement on going forward with START II ratification in the Duma. And as Sandy just said, that position held until about 4:00 p.m. this afternoon when we had the breakthrough.
SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: Can I say, too, that when I met with President Yeltsin in Moscow in January, he said, there are some questions that can only be resolved by Presidents. This question was resolved by two Presidents.
Q: To follow up Bob Bell, please. Bob, are you saying that the Russians, in fact, relinquished their demands for specific performance limits on higher speed, higher capability systems?
BELL: Well, I think it's important to recognize what's agreed and then what is not part of the regime. As Sandy said, we have agreed on a very important testing constraint. We agree that these higher-speed TMD systems -- and we have one principal program that's called the Navy Theater-wide, or Navy Upper Tier System -- for those faster TMD systems, you cannot test them against a strategic target without them getting captured then as an ABM.
Beyond that, we've agreed in this breakthrough agreement that we reached today that for those faster systems, we will share information on those programs with the Russians so they understand that they're designed to protect our troops and are not aimed at Russia, or designed to deal with the Russians; and second, that as newer technologies emerge, such as a laser program, for example, we will consult with them and talk through the compliance issues they have in their minds if they feel there are compliance issues. But as Sandy said, there is no veto associated with that consultation.
Now, beyond that, we have an obligation, the President has an obligation to uphold the law, and treaties are the supreme law of the land. And he is required to ensure that all of our faster TMD systems comply with the ABM treaty. And we'll continue through the normal Defense Department process to conduct those compliance reviews, just as we did with the Navy Upper Tier System, to be able to certify to Congress that, indeed, it is consistent with the treaty.
Q: Was this agreement on ABM negotiated with Primakov, or was it negotiated with Russian military? And if so, who?
BERGER: It was negotiated at various levels, but it was an agreement reached by the two Presidents.
Q: General Shalikashvili, these concessions that the U.S. is making to the Russians as far as implementing START II, delaying some of the destruction of their silos or their warheads, dismantling some of those warheads, are these unilateral concessions or can the U.S. military similarly delay implementing aspects of START II as well?
GENERAL SHALIKASHVILI: I, first of all, wouldn't characterize them at all as concessions. I think what was agreed upon is in the best interest, security interest of the United States. Those time limits that Sandy outlined here are time limits that apply to both, both parties.
Q: Will the U.S. military delay implementing --
BERGER: Can I just add two things? Number one, don't forget that START II was negotiated four years ago and that those timetables were put in place four years ago, so that they're obviously -- there's been some change by virtue of that delay.
Second of all, in order for these -- our Senate has ratified START II with one set of timetables. If the Duma ratifies START II with a different set of timetables, we would have to submit something back to the Senate, either a protocol with those adjustments, or, ideally if we have START III completed in time, we would submit both together -- the adjustment of the timetable and START III. But the START II obviously is not enforced until there is an exchange of instruments of ratification by the two governments.
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Q: Can I follow up on that? As recently as two days ago, President Yeltsin was sounding non-negotiable on the idea that this could be anything but a treaty. Could you describe the process by which he came around to agreeing to a document that was something short of a treaty?
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BERGER: Can I just add one thing? This is not, obviously, an unprecedented circumstance. The Helsinki Accords, for example, were here in Helsinki -- were signed by leaders. They have had enormous impact. They are enduring commitments, but they don't represent legally binding commitments in that sense.
The second thing I would say is, there are aspects of all of this that relate to, for example, a CFE agreement, if we were to get one, which relate to START II and START III, which obviously would be submitted to Congress for approval.
Q: Madam Secretary, do you share President Yeltsin's confidence of his ability to get START II through communist and nationalist-dominated Duma which has made explicit its connection of ratification with NATO expansion, not merely with ABM issues? And if they do not ratify, if they turn down the treaty, what happens then?
SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: Well, first of all, I think that both President Yeltsin and Foreign Minister Primakov are committed to pushing, as they can, on ratification in the Duma. And I think that we have to watch the process unfold.
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BERGER: Let me just add two things. One, in part -- in answer to your question, of course, if they didn't ratify START II, we would operate under START I for so long as that were the case. And that's another part of the answer.
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Q: Secretary Albright, can you tell us what happened to cause this late afternoon breakthrough on the ABM treaty, which then seemed to have created all this positive news that you had for us?
SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: Well, as I said, I think that there are certain decisions that can only be made by Presidents, and we witnessed two strong Presidents making decisions which created a breakthrough.
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