For personal use only Russian premier, his deputy and military discuss ratification of START-2 treaty (BBC Soviet Union Political; 03/16/99) Russian Prime Minister Yevgeniy Primakov has said that the United States will pull out of the ABM treaty if Russia does not ratify the START-2 treaty. In a discussion in the "Here and Now" series broadcast on Russian Public TV, which also featured First Deputy Prime Minister Yuriy Maslyukov, Chief of the Defence Ministry's General Staff Anatoliy Kvashnin, and a leading Russian missile designer Yuriy Solomonov, Primakov said such a decision by the US could create a completely new military situation and the possibility of a new arms race. Kvashnin said that if the treaty is not ratified there would be a gap between the two sides strategic nuclear forces. There was general consensus that if agreement can be reached with the United States on the number of warheads this would pave the way to talks on START-3. The following is the text of the programme. Sub- headings have been inserted editorially. {Aleksandr Lyubimov} Good evening, you are watching "Here and Now" on Russian Public TV. We are broadcasting from the White House, the seat of the Russian government. Russian Prime Minister Yevgeniy Primakov is here right now. Good evening. {Primakov} Good evening. {Lyubimov} The prime minister's first deputy, Yuriy Maslyukov, is also here, good evening. {Maslyukov} Good evening. {Lyubimov} Anatoliy Kvashnin, chief of the Defence Ministry's general staff, is on the line, can you hear us? {Kvashnin} Yes, perfectly well. {Lyubimov} Chief designer of the Topol-M state-of-the-art Russian missile system Yuriy Solomonov is also on the line, good evening. {Solomonov} Good evening. {Lyubimov} Let me just recall that ours is a somewhat extraordinary broadcast, because the State Duma is due to pronounce on the fate of the Russian-American Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the so-called START-2 and it is a very serious matter, since it will determine the global balance of forces until 2010, when Russia is going to be ruled not even by the current president's successor people so much like to talk about right now, but the successor's successor. {Voice-over, commenting over archive clips of arms and treaty signing ceremony} In 1992 America and Russia put an end to the Cold War, having announced that they were no longer enemies. {Russian President Boris} Yeltsin and {US President George} Bush signed the START-2 treaty in Moscow in January 1993. The US Congress has ratified the treaty. However, members of the Russian parliament have been debating all the pros and cons for five years now. Their main demand to America is to observe the ABM treaty, signed in 1972 and non- deployment of nuclear weapons on the territory of NATO's new member-countries. Sixty per cent of Russia's nuclear potential is now made up of ground-launched ICBMs. Up to 60 per cent of all US warheads are to be found on submarines. {VIDEO shows different figures: for ICBMs Russia's figure is 64 per cent and US figure is 23 per cent; for warheads Russia's figure is 28 per cent, meaning that these are submarine-based, and the figure for the US is 55 per cent. VIDEO also shows the following: the caption of strategic bombers appears on top, with a map of the world underneath. The figure of 22 per cent appears plastered over the US territory and the figure of 8 per cent over Russia's territory}. According to the {START-2} treaty, both countries must cut their nuclear potential to 3,500 warheads. The ratification of START-2 or non-ratification of START-2 will to a large extent determine Russia's policy in the 21st century. Consequences if START-2 is not ratified {Lyubimov} We have become so accustomed to concentrating on present-day life and our daily problems that it is honestly hard to believe that our State Duma is going to decide this issue and that our life in 10 or 15 years will depend on how it is resolved now, is that not the case? {Primakov} Yes, it is. That is why we are assuming extraordinary responsibility, advocating ratification of the treaty. It will indeed determine the way events develop on the international arena and our future relations with many states. So it is on thesethree criteria that I judge the need to ratify the treaty. {Lyubimov} Anatoliy Vasiliyevich, you, as chief of the general staff, are directly responsible for the security of the state. What will happen, do you think, if START-2 is not ratified? {Kvashnin} If we do not ratify the treaty, then there will be a gap between the number of the United States' strategic nuclear forces and the number of Russia's strategic nuclear forces, given the present financial-economic conditions. {Lyubimov} If we sign up to the treaty, will the Americans stop making missiles? {Kvashnin} Yes, if we sign the START-2 treaty, then both sides will have the same quantity of nuclear warheads. {Lyubimov} But if we don't sign up to the treaty, then they will start making a lot more missiles, and we will have to do the same? {Kvashnin} Yes, they could find themselves at the level of START- 1, at this quantitative level, and we will naturally have to reduce our nuclear potential based on our financial-economic situation. US may pull out of ABM treaty {Primakov} But I would like to go back to anti-missile defence, if you don't mind. {Lyubimov} Of course. {Primakov} The point is this. We foresaw this event and we want to insure against the United States withdrawing from the ABM treaty. When I was foreign minister I had talks with US State Secretary Madeleine Albright, and then in March 1997, in Helsinki, our presidents agreed that, in the event of ratification, the United States would abide absolutely firmly to the ABM treaty. And later, in September, we signed this in New York with Madeleine Albright, and thus registered this matter in legal terms. And I would like to say what this means. It means that the United States will decline to set up its own strategic ABM defence system if we ratify the treaty as normal. If we don't, then I am more than sure that the United States will pull out of this treaty. {Lyubimov} In other words, create a new anti-missile defence system? {Primakov} Yes, and then we will have to think of a completely new military situation which would require a new arms race. {Lyubimov} And all this, Yuriy Dmitriyevich, is affecting the life of our people, isn't it? I mean, the amount of money we want or need to spend on improving our defence as an effect of the treaty. {Maslyukov} Certainly. Our defence spending is a bottomless pit. But getting back to what you were talking about earlier on, we shall still have to scrap the missiles, because it is clear that keeping on combat duty a missile which is past its service life twice over is extremely dangerous. This can mean another Chernobyl, or even worse. And we must scrap these missiles if we do not want anything like that to happen. This involves a very complex technological process, but it can still be done. So, we shall have to decommission these missiles, and since Yuriy Maksimovich signed those protocols, it naturally follows that by the year 2007 we are duty bound to scrap the missiles, START-2 or no START-2. But because the START-2 deadline is 2007, it means our economy will not be affected that much. {Primakov} Yuriy Dmitriyevich raised a very important issue. Under the terms of START-2, we initially had to decommission all the missiles which, under this treaty will have to be scrapped before 1st January 2003. We listened to deliberations in the State Duma as we listened to our experts. And I must stress that the Duma wanted this too. We managed to negotiate with the Americans to let us put back the date for scrapping the missiles by five years - to 31st December 2007. Preparing the way for START-3 Moreover, we managed to reach an agreement with the Americans - which was not easy - that we shall move straight on to START-3 talks, in which we are highly interested. The START-3 talks will not just be about setting new parameters. The present figure is 2,000-2,500 warheads and we shall probably be lowering the number. This was mentioned by President Yeltsin as well as our American partners. But all the same, after 2005 we shall still have in total more missiles than China, Britain and France put together. I beg you to consider this too. There is yet another aspect I should like to draw your attention to: we have already agreed that the START-3 talks will include things such as seaborne cruise missiles, the most destabilizing element at the moment, which, I must stress, is extremely important to us. We also agreed that we shall be discussing the so-called restorative potential, i.e. the ability to recreate systems after the scrapping of manoeuvrable warheads and so on, and then the self-targeting missiles, so that there will be no return to this later on. {Lyubimov} All the same, I think that a direct military threat in our time, especially where Russia's relations with the US are concerned is, all in all, an abstract thing. Our security as a state is affected more by the real economy than by a nuclear threat. How much must be spent to improve and develop strategic arms? {Maslyukov} Let me put it this way. In order to maintain a current missile force on the requisite level, you have to spend approximately R1.5bn a year. In order to destroy the whole potential, which is becoming irrevocably obsolete, by a certain time, we will need to spend around R10bn a year to secure, as it were, safe conditions for the destruction and scrapping of the missiles. From the point of view of creating a new potential, I think we will keep within the limit of around R7bn to R8bn a year. {Primakov} Well, as far as this liquidation is concerned, the Americans, all in all will- {Maslyukov} Yes, the Americans, our partners, are willing to assist us. {Lyubimov} They are helping to liquidate old missiles. {Maslyukov} Yes, they are financing a proportion of the work needed to liquidate them. It is to do with decontaminating warhead- carrying re-entry vehicles, with their dismantling and reprocessing to obtain fuel used for other purposes. {Lyubimov} It seems to me that following Afghanistan and Chechnya people realize very well what war is and therefore they do not need to be told about it. However, if you take the START-2 treaty, its supporters think the less warheads there are, the safer the country can feel. Its opponents, on the contrary, think that it can affect the country's security greatly. Yuriy Semenovich, how much, or how little must one have for the country to feel secure? {Solomonov} From the point of view of the criterion of sufficiency, the question falls, as it were, into three components. The first one concerns what needs to be done in the economic sphere. As far as the economy is concerned, if we reduce the number of warheads to the level we are talking about, then we need, of course, to guarantee the funding of the work which is to be carried out. This is what Yuriy Dmitriyevich was talking about - {Lyubimov} And this amount suits us, does it? {Solomonov} This amount suits us - {Lyubimov} How many warheads does Russia need, say, by the year 2007, so that - {Solomonov} Within the framework of the START-2 treaty, this ceiling is fixed at 3-3,500, and within the framework of the protocol which was discussed in Finland, this level drops by more than a half to 1,500. {Kvashnin} We must look at this matter from the point of view of the task of the strategic nuclear forces, and from the matter of nuclear restraint. Nuclear restraint is persuasive to any aggressor, whatever its scale, to the extent that any war against Russia would be unacceptable to it, that this would be a war with clear consequences which would be unacceptable to an enemy. And in this respect the main factor of nuclear restraint is the possibility of the strategic nuclear forces to inflict unacceptable damage on any aggressor in any conditions. The presence of 2 or 3-3,500 warheads , or even fewer, in the strategic nuclear forces, -under START- convincingly shows the power of our strike. At the same time, even after a strike by an aggressor, we would be able to preserve an estimated about 700-800 warheads which would be more than sufficient for a counter strike. {Lyubimov} Your opponents are saying that we are spending considerably more money than one could even imagine on scrapping missiles. {Maslyukov} Well, you see, never mind that we are scrapping them. We can't just leave them when they start leaking in their cisterns, do you see? {Primakov} I would like to tell you a story, even with a straight face. During a debate in one of the Duma committees, a member of this committee who knows the state of affairs very well turned to his colleagues who had opposed the START-2 treaty and said: 'Listen, go and build your dacha next to these combat- ready missiles and let them stay there for as long as it takes'. I believe that a very important point was stressed by our top experts with whom we have been talking during this programme, and that was that agreement with the United States enables us to enter into an equal number of warheads both on START-2 and START-3. And, on START-3, I would like to stress once again that those elements would be out into play which the Americans did not want to include among those being reduced. {Primakov} And this is extremely important to us. They are elements of strategic armaments such as seaborne cruise missiles, for example {Lyubimov} And when do you expect to conclude the START-3 treaty? I mean, if not you, then whoever, another president - {Primakov} Let's say, Russia will. But we already have a timetable. We shall start negotiations right away. So far we are holding consultations. The talks will begin only after the ratification {of START-2}. {Kvashnin} One of the conditions for ratification is the start of START-3 talks. {Primakov} Yes, and at the same time, the start of the talks is subject to ratification. So, both are interconnected. But the START-3 treaty must be signed before 2003. We have already agreed on this with the Americans. We have a sort of verbal agreement that the threshold will be lowered. {Lyubimov} Thank you all and thanks to our guests. I hope that today's unprecedented public appearance of our state and government leaders - a very rare event for the present government, by the way - was not just a concession made by Yuriy Dmitriyevich to his party comrades, but something more significant. If society cannot agree on what has been happening in the country during the past 10 years, it can perhaps make up its mind about things that can happen in the next 10 years, here and now. (Copyright 1999)