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US-Russia row leaves Cold War treaties in shreds

They were the acronyms that kept the world safe — ABM, INF, CFE and START — but today these epic Cold War-era treaties are dead or in danger and a rancorous US-Russian meeting on the weekend has made things even worse.

The mission of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and US Secretary of State Robert Gates in Moscow on Friday and Saturday was to calm fears over their plan to station anti-missile defences in new NATO members Poland and the Czech Republic.

Gates brought “new ideas” from President George W. Bush’s beleaguered administration.

But President Vladimir Putin, the increasingly hawkish leader of the world’s biggest energy exporter, answered with a loud “nyet.”

He not only told the Pentagon to freeze the missile-defence plan but threatened to abandon the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, a landmark deal which eliminated Russian and US shorter and medium range nuclear missiles and hastened the end of the Cold War.

The chilly exchange across an ornate table in Putin’s residence illustrated just how far apart the two huge nuclear powers now stand on key security issues and how far they will go to make their point.

Moscow “delivered an ultimatum: either Washington takes into account Russia’s interests in the security field, or Moscow will start breaking the entire military-political arrangement set up in the world after the Cold War,” the Kommersant daily wrote Saturday.

At the heart of this dispute lies the US missile-defence project and Moscow’s determination to stop further NATO and US expansion into its former empire.

Washington insists the modest radar and interceptor system would protect Europe from smaller but potentially dangerous countries like Iran, without impacting on the vast Russian offensive nuclear capability.

Moscow scoffs that Iran does not even have a missile, or is likely to have one, that could reach Europe — meaning that the system must be aimed at Russia.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned darkly of “measures to neutralise that threat” if Moscow’s fears were ignored.

Russian strategists point out that the US push for a missile shield follows Washington’s 2001 unilateral pull-out from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), which banned such systems.

On Friday, Putin upped the ante by declaring the INF missile limitation treaty void unless other countries beyond Russia and the United States can be persuaded to join.

“Otherwise, it will be difficult for us to keep within the framework of such a treaty,” he said.

Putin did not explain which countries he thought must enter the INF, but, if nothing else, he succeeded in raising the stakes in an already risk-filled debate.

Meanwhile, there is another logjam over the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, which stipulates limits on tanks, troops and other hardware across the continent.

Russia says it will tear up the agreement on December 12 if amendments are not ratified by all NATO nations.

But NATO countries say they cannot do this until Russia withdraws troops from troubled regions of former Soviet republics Moldova and Georgia — troops that Russia argues are merely peacekeepers.

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