28 April 2000

White House Report: Clinton Plans to Move Forward On Arms Control

White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said Friday that the Administration hopes to move forward on an arms control agreement at the upcoming meeting with Russian President-elect Vladimir Putin in Moscow June 4-5.

"I wouldn't expect on that trip that there will be any sort of breakthrough on this," Lockhart said, "but it's certainly high on the agenda, both looking at the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty) in the context of a national missile defense, and also at the START II, START III discussions."

When asked if the new government in Russia would continue discussions on renegotiating the ABM Treaty, Lockhart said, "I think we believe that the new government is committed to continuing these serious discussions that started in Cologne" (at the G-8 Summit in June 1999.)

Asked if Clinton had a timetable to make a decision on the missile defense system to be implemented, Lockhart said they expect a decision to be made after a mid-summer recommendation by the Pentagon. "The President has made very clear that this decision will be made based on the four criteria that he's clearly laid out," the Press Secretary said. "And he's looking to see what the Pentagon recommends...they're still in the process, the testing process and we'll see, when that's complete, what the recommendation is."

In response to the April 26 statement by Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jesse Helms, Lockhart said, "Senator Helms' views are well-known...we are going to work with the Senator, because it is in our national security interest, as well as with the 99 other Senators, to move our arms control agenda forward."

Asked for a response to Senator Helms' remarks that the President is pursuing this so that he can simply have a major arms treaty under his belt, Lockhart said that Helms "is over-thinking it a bit...These discussions are -- for achieving goals that relate to our national security. And to ascribe political motivations here is just wrong.

"I certainly would hope that the statements by the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would not undercut the negotiations, and I don't expect them to," said Lockhart. "Both the United States and Russia approach this with both of our national security interests at the heart of these discussions. These discussions are serious. They're not about domestic politics in this country."

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: usinfo.state.gov)