A missile defense system is important "not simply to prevent the catastrophe" of a nuclear attack on the United States or its allies, but to convince the potential possessors of ballistic missiles "not even to think about" developing them, says the State Department's top arms control official.

John Bolton, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, said in a recent exclusive interview that deterrence "as a general principle is important ... but the automatic reliance on it as a functioning strategic concept I think would be misplaced."

Rogue states, he said, "may well appreciate that if they launched a nuclear weapon at the United States or an ally, they would risk being obliterated, but they may think that they can use the prospect of a launch to blackmail us."

He said one reason for the expedited research and development on missile defense is the administration's concern not just about current capabilities but "capabilities that might be out there in 10 years that we don't even know about at this point."

Bolton told Washington File staff writers Jacquelyn S. Porth and Margaret A. McKay that the United States and Russia "are vulnerable to attack or to blackmail by states that have maybe half a dozen or a dozen missiles tipped with weapons of mass destruction that could threaten us. And what we want to do is break free of the constraints of the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty that preclude us from developing limited missile defense systems."

He said talks with the Russians on missile defense are being conducted at the presidential, ministerial and senior official levels, and the United States hopes to "make some progress" during the negotiations on reducing the levels of offensive nuclear weapons.

It is "the full intention of the administration," he said, "that as the technology for missile defense develops, we'll make it available to friends and allies who are interested in participating in it, through NATO and through other alliance structures."

Bolton made these other points:

• Arms control treaties that "are ineffective or counterproductive or obsolete ... shouldn't be allowed to stand in the way of the development of our foreign policy."

• The fact that many states are not following their commitments under existing arms control agreements is "one of the reasons why the idea of counter-proliferation -- not just nonproliferation, but counter-proliferation -- is something we have to take seriously."

• The Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty appears to be deadlocked at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, and while it might be possible to move ahead, "I'm not very optimistic on that."

• The United States remains committed to its humanitarian demining program, and its landmine operations are conducted in a "highly responsible fashion."
• The United States is concerned about management and budget issues at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). "The failure of the OPCW to carry out its mandate effectively could call the Chemical Weapons Convention itself into question."

• The transfer of weapons and sensitive technology from Russia to Iran is a very sensitive issue, "not just because of the specifics of Iran, but because of what it says about Russian policy generally and the kind of relationship we hope to have with them."

• The United States is prepared, together with its European allies, to continue to support Russia's efforts to destroy its stocks of chemical weapons, "assuming we can see the level of commitment from them that we need."

• The United States continues to support a number of legitimate international activities to curb trafficking in small arms and light weapons -- including weapons destruction programs, participation in embargoes, and efforts to limit illicit traffic in arms to regions of conflict -- but opposes efforts to divert attention into debates on domestic gun control policy.

Following is the transcript of the interview:

Q: How important are arms control issues in the Bush administration, and what is the level of commitment to arms control?

Mr. Bolton: Arms control, as part of an overall strategy of advancing American interests, remains a very high priority. Arms control can be an important part of American foreign policy, but I think the real question is what advances our national interest. And in those cases where, for example, arms control treaties are ineffective or counterproductive or obsolete, they shouldn't be allowed to stand in the way of the development of our foreign policy. And I think that's part of what we're trying to articulate as we go through reviewing some existing treaty obligations and considering whether or not to get into potential new obligations as well.

Q: The U.S. has been criticized by some as being isolationist for steps it has taken in the area of arms control, such as going ahead with plans for missile defense despite opposition from friends and allies and declining to support the Biological Weapons Protocol. How do you respond to this criticism, and what do you see as the role of multilateral diplomacy in arms control?

Mr. Bolton: I don't think it's isolationist at all. I think it's a question, on a kind of case-by-case basis, of whether we consider different foreign policy tools as being useful.

In the case of the ABM Treaty, it's a 30-year-old treaty that was established between the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, and was designed to prevent missile defenses that would frustrate the other's strategic offensive weapons capability.

What we face today is a completely different world where there is no Soviet Union, where there is no Cold War, where we don't fear a Russian nuclear strike, but where both we and the Russians are vulnerable to attack or to blackmail by states that have maybe half a dozen or a dozen missiles tipped with weapons of mass destruction that could threaten us. And what we want to do is break free of the constraints of the ABM Treaty that preclude us from developing limited missile defense systems to protect our national territory against the launch of weapons of mass destruction by rogue states.

I think it's the full intention of the administration that as the technology for missile defense develops, we'll make it available to friends and allies who are interested in participating in it, through NATO and through other alliance structures. I think that shows a decidedly internationalist bent to the policy.

In terms of some of the other positions we've taken, such as on the BW [Biological Weapons] Protocol, the United States remains committed to the underlying Biological Weapons Convention. Certainly it's a matter of great concern to us. We're probably more vulnerable to BW attack than any other country in the world.

Our concerns about the draft BW protocol were that it did not really add any verification capability to what we already have. It didn't do anything to stop states that are parties to the underlying Biological Weapons Convention and which are lying about their commitments and violating it right now. It didn't provide any prospect of bringing them into compliance with the obligations they undertook 30 years ago, and the protocol posed major risks to our biological warfare defense capabilities, to our system of export controls that are intended to prevent dual-use technologies from falling into the hands of potential proliferators, and it posed grave risks to important intellectual property concerns of our pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

So the U.S. position on that didn't have anything to do with the issue of multilateralism or not; it had to do with our cost-benefit analysis of the draft protocol and our conclusion that it provided essentially no benefits and had a lot of downsides.

Q: The administration, then, does feel that multilateral diplomacy has a role to play?

Mr. Bolton: Yes. Secretary [of State Colin] Powell, who has worked very hard over the first six months of the administration, for example, to revive the sanctions regime against Iraq and to get weapons inspectors back into Iraq, has gotten very close to success on that and plans to try again in the fall. We've been speaking extensively with European allies about the expansion of NATO, which is the preeminent multilateral defense alliance in the world, and we've been pushing very hard for the launching of a new global round of trade negotiations.

In a whole range of activities, it seems to me pretty clear that we're engaged in very intensive, very aggressive internationalist diplomacy.

Q: Why did you say that you thought the United States was perhaps more vulnerable than any other country in the world to potential biological weapons attacks?

Mr. Bolton: Because I think we're the preeminent country in the world, and those that would be inclined to use these weapons of mass destruction for blackmail purposes, for terrorism purposes, I think find us a very attractive target, both because of who we are and because having such an extraordinarily open society makes us more vulnerable than many others. So it would be ignoring reality for us not to be concerned about the biological and chemical weapons threat.

And that's another reason why we are concerned about the BW protocol. I mean, many of our European friends say, "All right, we understand, we share many of your concerns, it's not such a good treaty, but a bad treaty is better than no treaty at all." I just flatly disagree with that. A bad treaty is a treaty that encourages, or at least allows, violation and disdain, and it fosters international hypocrisy, lulls people into a false sense of complacency, and actually can detract from our ability to focus on the problem, which, as I've said, in the case of BW attack on the United States, we regard as a serious problem.

So we take the treaty obligation seriously. And the idea of accepting something that doesn't accomplish its stated aims and may actually weaken our ability to protect ourselves is just the wrong way to go.

Q: Could you explain and elaborate a little more on a recent statement you made? It's, "From little acorns, bad treaties may grow."

Mr. Bolton: That's something I said, actually, in a press conference in New York after I gave my speech at the U.N. Conference on Small Arms and Light Weapons. And the question on small arms and light weapons was that the conference was considering a draft program of action that had many different steps, not all of which, not even most of which, were recommendations to enter into binding treaty obligations.

What I was trying to convey was that even seemingly innocuous provisions in things like this draft program of action can sometimes take on a life of their own, and that if you don't explain early and clearly what your concerns are with proposals, they can develop a momentum that carries them forward when people never intended it.

And I said to the U.N. press corps, you of all people ought to know how it works here, where you start off with half of a sentence in a preambular paragraph in an obscure resolution in an obscure conference on an obscure subject, and over time the half of a sentence becomes an operative paragraph in another resolution, then it becomes the subject of a General Assembly resolution, then it becomes the subject of communiques, then it becomes the subject of a major international conference, and then it becomes the subject of a treaty document, which, it turns out, we find is unacceptable and we have to reject it. And people say, "But everybody else accepts this treaty. For 10 years this has been going on and you never expressed objection to it."

And that's what I meant by "bad treaties from little acorns grow." So my idea is to deal with the acorn at the beginning, and to make sure that people understand what our substantive position is.

Q: Are there arms control treaties which you feel have lasting value?

Mr. Bolton: Yes, I think the INF [Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces] Treaty, which has resulted in the elimination of that entire category of weapons, has been a success. I think, for example, the Chemical Weapons Convention has been important, although it's now running into difficulties in its administration and operation that we're paying a lot of attention to. I think START [Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty] I and START II were valuable treaties. I think the compliance mechanism, especially in START I, is something that you can point to as being successfully implemented.

Treaties are advantageous when the parties have a mutual interest in complying with them. Sometimes that works out, and sometimes it doesn't. And you have to make a hard-headed assessment on a treaty-by-treaty basis, whether it's bilateral or multilateral. But the idea that simply acquiescing in a multilateral arms control agreement is solving the problem I think is naive.

Q: Why wouldn't a so-called rogue state be deterred by the prospect of total obliteration of its regime by advanced U.S. conventional weapons or even a nuclear response, in the same way that Russia was deterred throughout the Cold War by the potential threat of nuclear annihilation?

Mr. Bolton: I think deterrence as a general principle is important. It's actually weakness that invites provocation, so the ability to have a strong American defense I think, by and large, does act as a deterrent.

But it would be a mistake to assume that deterrence, or the elaboration of that in the doctrine of mutual assured destruction, acted with clockwork precision during the Cold War. You know, after the Cuban missile crisis in the Kennedy administration, Robert McNamara, who was secretary of defense, was asked how the United States and the Soviet Union had avoided a nuclear exchange over the embargo of Cuba and the whole crisis. And his answer was, "We lucked out." Now, that's hardly the strongest defense I could think of for a doctrine of mutual assured destruction, but it worked out because the planners on both sides made calculations that, over time, allowed us to escape nuclear war.

But you can't count on every other leader around the world having the same ability to calculate and analyze what the impact of their decisions would be. Leaders that come from different value systems than ours, that have different appreciation for the value of human life, that have different appreciation for what happens to their regime, that are in different strategic political situations than the former Soviet Union was -- all of that means that their view of the world could well be different than what our opponent's view in the Cold War was.

So that if you imagine, for example, a situation of Hitler in his bunker at the end of World War II, I wouldn't say that his calculations were entirely rational, from our perspective. Likewise, in the case of the North Korean regime, which I don't think we understand very well, I don't think you can assume that their calculations are entirely rational in the way we would define that. I'm not saying that deterrence can't work in certain circumstances, but the automatic reliance on it as a functioning strategic concept I think would be misplaced.

And there is a more fundamental level as well, and that is that some of these rogue states may well appreciate that if they launched a nuclear weapon at the United States or an ally, that they would risk being obliterated, but they may think that they can use the prospect of a launch to blackmail us, and that would be, from their perspective, very rational, because we wouldn't have confidence that they wouldn't do it. So from that perspective, their having an intercontinental ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction capability and our not having a defense mechanism does give them blackmail potential.

And so the missile defense system is important not simply to prevent the catastrophe of a nuclear weapon landing on the United States, but to convince the potential possessors of ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] not even to think about doing it.

Q: I wanted to ask you about the Nuclear Posture Review. Are you involved with that in any way, and do you expect it to have a continued endorsement of the TRIAD (air-, land-, sea-based) concept?

Mr. Bolton: That's basically a Department of Defense responsibility and it is still under review. I don't think it's probably appropriate to comment on it at this point.

Q: Do you have any sense of when it will be finished?

Mr. Bolton: Their goal is sometime in the early fall.

Q: What do you think about the prospect of, in the future, de-alerting (taking off hair-trigger alert) nuclear weapons in the United States and/or Russia?

Mr. Bolton: That's something, actually, that the Defense Department is considering both in the Nuclear Posture Review and in the Quadrennial Defense Review as well. So they are looking at that question. We're waiting to hear what their views are.

The president talked about that possibility during the campaign as part of his effort at that time to articulate a new strategic framework, so it's certainly getting a very, very close look.

Q: The administration has talked about the growing missile threat to the United States, and I was wondering if you see a difference between having the capability to launch versus having the actual intention or the actual motivation to launch?

Mr. Bolton: Sure, those are the two factors that you have to take into account, and I think one of the basic lessons of international geopolitics is that intentions can change more rapidly than capabilities.

One of the purposes for the expedited nature of the research and development parts of the ballistic missile defense program is that it's not simply a question of being concerned about capabilities that are out there now that could threaten us, but capabilities that might be out there in 10 years that we don't even know about at this point.

So if you simply say, well, right now the threat is not that great, or it's not great enough to be concerned about, you can't say with certainty what the threat, what the capability will be in 10 years. And even when we might have today less concern about somebody's intention, even if they have the capability, you don't know what their intent will be in 10 years, either.

So it is a question of trying to evaluate both factors, and this is one of the reasons why professions of a lack of desire to use a ballistic missile against the United States or against its allies aren't necessarily anything you can take to the bank.

Q: Fighting missile proliferation has required multilateral diplomacy in the past. Is the United States now saying that a multilateral military defensive response is required, and to what degree should the two approaches be balanced, or is it one or the other?

Mr. Bolton: There are a number of multilateral regimes in the area of weapons of mass destruction that are anti-proliferation in nature -- the Australia Group, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Wassenaar Arrangement, the Missile Technology Control Regime -- all of which have had desirable effects, but all of which have had problems as well, which means that they're not as effective as they might be. This was an issue that Secretary Powell raised in Beijing on his recent trip -- whether the Chinese have been compliant with their November 2000 commitment not to ship missile parts or technology, effectively in violation of the MTCR. So it's an ongoing problem.

We know that there are a lot of states that have made commitments under existing arms control agreements that they're not following. You can try and work through the multilateral nonproliferation regimes to deal with that. In some cases, you may have to work with a smaller group of countries. And it's one of the reasons why the idea of counter-proliferation -- not just nonproliferation, but counter-proliferation -- is something we have to take seriously.

Q: Do you think that the United States has a selling job with respect to missile defense, a selling job to the U.S. public and the U.S. Congress in the same way that it has had to tackle our friends and allies abroad?

Mr. Bolton: Well, the public opinion polls tell you different things, but I think there's a pretty broad appreciation in the United States that we are vulnerable to missile attack. And that wasn't necessarily true a few years ago. I think people are more aware of the threat. I think there is greater receptivity in Congress to work on missile defense. How, exactly, it goes forward is still the subject of debate. That's one of the reasons that we've been consulting as vigorously with the Russians as we have been, and one of the reasons we've consulted as much as we have with friends and allies overseas, and why the president has spoken about the subject as often as he has. Obviously, he thinks it's very important for his own agenda, and has made it clear both during the campaign and since he was inaugurated what a priority this is for him.

I think you can see from recent developments in Congress, including over the past couple of years the passage of the statutes that say that development of national missile defense is a policy of the United States, and the support that they've given him since the Genoa Summit and his announcement that we have high-level consultations with the Russians on moving beyond the ABM Treaty.

Q: So beyond the president's statements, there isn't an orchestrated campaign focusing on persuading Congress and the American public?

Mr. Bolton: There are ongoing discussions with Congress and with the media, and so on. But a lot of this is a question of developing exactly what the program will be, and the Department of Defense has started on that. We want to have conversations with the Russians. But I don't think there's any doubt the president has made clear he wants to press ahead with missile defense as expeditiously as possible, and I do think that's pretty generally understood.

Q: What are some of the milestones ahead on missile defense in terms of sharing information or perhaps establishing partnerships with foreign entities?

Mr. Bolton: A lot depends on the consultations with the Russians that began in Washington the week of August 6. Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was in Moscow August 13, and then I go myself the week after that. Secretary Powell meets with [Russian] Foreign Minister [Igor] Ivanov in New York again in mid-September. And the precise answers on that will depend on how those discussions go.

But we've also had expressions of interest from NATO members and others about roles that they and their private sector companies can play in missile defense as it develops, and I'm sure we would welcome that kind of interest. But exactly how that would play out, it's a little early to tell.

Q: Do you envision that you'll be one of the lead negotiators with the Russians, or is it being split up among departments, or is the president going to take the lead?

Mr. Bolton: Well, I think ultimately, given the fact that the president met with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin -- first in Slovenia and then in Italy at the G-8, that this is a negotiation that will basically be conducted right at the top. What we've got are separate ministerial contacts between Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov and Secretary Powell and Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

And what [Under Secretary of Defense for Policy] Doug Feith did at the meetings in Washington, what I'm doing in Moscow next week, is just trying to lay some groundwork for the ministers. But I think we'll see the consultations conducted basically at a very high level and very expeditiously.

Q: How do you envision fulfilling the president's concept of achieving lower levels of nuclear weapons? Do you see this evolving unilaterally, bilaterally, through traditional negotiations, or a combination of these?

Mr. Bolton: Well, a lot of this is part of the Nuclear Posture Review, and since we don't know the outcome of that, it's hard to say what levels would be recommended. But the basic premise, I think, is that we don't see that we're in a Cold War situation with Russia any more; we don't see them as inevitably in an adversarial relationship. And therefore, in a different kind of environment, you don't need the extensive system of offensive weapons that we've had.

And that was recognized as long ago as the first Bush administration, which is why we were able to negotiate START I and then START II. Now, how that works, whether it's through the sort of traditional arduous arms control negotiation, with weeks and months in Geneva, or whether we can do a kind of unilateral but parallel reduction along the lines of the presidential nuclear initiatives, again in the first Bush administration -- that's our preference. It's easier, it's more flexible. Ultimately it may be more economical. You don't get locked into artificial numbers. You're not, in effect, in a Cold War competition about what the agreement looks like. Each side decides for itself what's in its own security interest. And as I say, you end up with a more flexible and maybe even lower-cost outcome. But these are all things we're going to talk to the Russians about and hopefully make some progress on.

Q: When do you think the administration's review of the CTBT [Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty] will be finished? And what do you see as its flaws?

Mr. Bolton: I don't know that I can pinpoint a time on it. There are a lot of things to consider. The questions that led the Senate to reject the treaty and for the president to oppose the treaty during the campaign are still there. The questions about the verifiability of the prohibition on testing and the concerns about the safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile remain. These are all being addressed at the scientific and technical level, at the military level. You know, we're continuing a very active review. And the president has said that he's going to continue the moratorium on testing.

So from that perspective, because the moratorium is in place, there's not going to be any change in our actual activity. And we want to look at all aspects of the Stockpile Stewardship Program, and the safety and reliability question generally, because if the reliability of the deterrent itself came into question, then you'd have a dramatic change in the structure of world order, and we want to be absolutely sure that doesn't happen. And so do our allies, by the way.

Q: What is the U.S. position on continuing the funding for the international monitoring system to track nuclear testing?

Mr. Bolton: Well, the request level is in the 2002 budget, and it's wending its way through Congress, and we're not going to take any steps that foreshadow a final decision one way or the other on the CTBT, while it is under review.

Q: On nonproliferation, what are some of the elements of this strategy that the administration is endorsing or pursuing?

Mr. Bolton: I think one thing that we want to look at perhaps most carefully is tightening up the international nonproliferation regimes. It was one thing during the Cold War, when you had the COCOM [Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls]system, which had a fairly limited membership, fairly strict rules, fairly tight enforcement, and a fairly clear target of concern -- the communist countries, which we didn't want to advance on us technologically. In a post-Cold War world, there is more disagreement among potential suppliers about what the problem states are, and more disagreement about what really amounts to a problematic dual-use technology or weapons sale. There are different sorts of geostrategic assessments among them. There's pressure to expand the membership of the regimes, which makes sense if you want to get more suppliers in, but if you expand the membership, you may be reducing the consensus about what the problems are and so on.

So these are some very difficult trade-offs, and I think we're going to be looking at all of the nonproliferation regimes to see if they can be made tighter. And one of the things we want to look at most particularly is whether, in addition to the traditional tools for nonproliferation, counter-proliferation activities make sense as well.

Q: Can you say something about plans to review the U.S. export licensing process and how that meshes with arms control?

Mr. Bolton: Right now Congress is considering the reauthorization of the Export Administration Act, hoping to modernize and improve the whole licensing system, and Congress hasn't finished with that. We're going to have to work with them in the fall, but it remains a very high priority. The president's spoken on that at least a couple of times. The vice president and [National Security Advisor] Condi Rice have been involved. Doug Feith and Ken Juster, under secretary of commerce for export controls, and I just, in fact, had lunch earlier this week talking about exactly this subject. So it's a very high priority. We also, of course, have licensing responsibility under the Arms Export Control Act, and we're looking at a whole range of possible improvements in that process to make it more expeditious and more transparent, so that we can achieve the goals of protecting our national security interest but also not disadvantage American companies that are engaged in international competition, often with companies from countries that don't have anything like the export control system that we have.

Q: What is your view of the Fissile Material Control Treaty, and what do you think are the prospects of it ever becoming a reality?

Mr. Bolton: Well, it's been hung up for a long time in Geneva, and I'm not sure, with the Conference on Disarmament session we've just gone through, that we've seen a lot of prospects for moving it. But, it's something that I'll certainly keep my eye on and if we see some possibilities, it might be possible to move ahead.

But I would have to say, it looks to me, anyway, to be just as deadlocked now as it's been for the past several years, so I would have to say I'm not very optimistic on that.

Q: On the subject of land mines, you have indicated that the U.S. humanitarian de-mining program will be a priority. Could you comment on that and also on your view of the general U.S. policy on land mines and attempts to ban them?

Mr. Bolton: The humanitarian work that the United States does on de-mining is something that we've been doing for a long time and something that we're committed to. We've been involved in a whole range of places, from Afghanistan to Cambodia to Central America. What happens with land mines in conflicts like that -- guerrilla wars, civil wars -- is very different than what the United States does with anti-personnel land mines in its own military practice, where the mines have self-destruct mechanisms that, in thousands and thousands of tests, have never failed. Our mines are put in fields that are mapped, that are de-mined when we finish with them. We conduct our land mine operations in the same, I think, highly responsible fashion that we conduct all of our military operations.

There are a lot of other people out there who don't conduct military operations in a responsible fashion, whether it's land mines or anything else. And we also have some critical needs that other countries don't have, specifically on the Korean peninsula. That's one reason why even the Clinton administration didn't sign the Ottawa Convention [which bans all landmines].

And other states that have particularly sensitive defense needs didn't sign the Ottawa Convention either. My favorite is Finland. Everybody would say, well, certainly Finland would be one of the sponsors, but given their history and their geographical location, they have declined to sign it. In fact, the Finnish negotiator in the run-up to Ottawa once responded to criticism from somebody from Sweden who said they just can't believe Finland isn't going to sign the convention. And the Finnish negotiator said -- I'm paraphrasing now -- but he basically said, that's easy for Sweden to say, they think Finland is their land mine.

So, the effort at Ottawa about banning land mines didn't really take into account the demining problem that remains in places like Cambodia, parts of Africa, Central America, as I mentioned, Afghanistan. That's really the focus of our activities, as a practical matter, to remove land mines from areas that should be back in civilian control and be safe places for civilians to live. The land mines the United States uses don't pose threats to civilians. And that's one reason why, as I say, our use of them has been far more responsible than others who have used them and who have caused the humanitarian problems that everybody is concerned about.

Q: What policy positions do you expect the United States to be pushing or endorsing at the December review conference on the Conventional Weapons Convention?

Mr. Bolton: That is all still under review now. I think we're looking at several things, but I think it's premature really to answer that question. But I'd be happy to talk to you about it further when we get a little bit closer to it.

Q: You talked a little bit about chemical weapons earlier, and I wondered if you've had an opportunity to focus yet on perhaps financial or management reforms that might have to be taken in The Hague by the OPCW [Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons]?

Mr. Bolton: Yes, I have. In fact, I testified about that at my confirmation hearing. I was quite concerned by some of the issues that I had heard raised about management and budget issues at the OPCW. And we've actually had fairly extensive discussions here and with some of our allies who were participants in the OPCW about what steps might be taken. And I would say that I sense a lot of concern among some of the major players in the chemical weapons organization that we're going to have to address. But at this point I don't have anything specific to say -- just to underline that the failure of the OPCW to carry out its mandate effectively could call the Chemical Weapons Convention itself into question and threaten the integrity of the convention. But if the convention is not implemented properly, as I say, this can undercut support and efficacy of the convention as a whole. So that's why we take it so seriously, and so do the other prominent countries that we've had conversations with. The countries that share our concerns are the same ones in the U.N. system generally who care about management questions. And really I've been struck so far -- we certainly haven't talked to all of them, but of the ones I have talked to -- about how broadly our concerns are shared. And I think we're all mulling what to do to improve the OPCW in a way that doesn't lead to the CWC itself being called into question.

Q: Some members of Congress have suggested that the more pressing threat for the United States is the suitcase bomber or the truck bomber, or even somebody firing a shoulder-launched missile at us, as opposed to weapons of mass destruction. Is that something that you dismiss completely or --

Mr. Bolton: No, I don't dismiss it completely at all. But there are something like 29 nations now with a ballistic missile capability. We don't know how many others might be trying to develop it. Ballistic missiles are, in effect, a multiple capable system, since they can be pointed in a lot of different directions, and if their payload is big enough, the weapon that they can carry might be significantly greater than what might be done by more terrorist kinds of actions. So I think the level of potential damage is substantially higher.

But in terms of concern about terrorist attacks, I think it's absolutely something we should have as a high priority. And I think it's a mistake to say that doing one excuses you from being concerned about the other. To say that you ought to focus on one but not the other would be a mistake.

So I don't have any disagreement at all with people who worry about the threat of the sorts of things you've mentioned. I think it's legitimate. I think, as I said earlier, the United States is a major target, and of course we should be concerned about it.

Q: The United States has said that it's prepared to meet with the North Koreans. What are the primary U.S. concerns that you want to discuss with them?

Mr. Bolton: Well, we've said repeatedly, for over three months now, I guess, since the president's last statement about resuming discussions with the North, that we're prepared to sit down with them and talk without precondition at any place they name. And this has been conveyed to them privately in New York, it's been conveyed to them publicly as recently as the secretary's trip to South Korea, and we haven't gotten an answer back. I don't know how to make the position any clearer than it's been made.

We've said we want to talk to them about a whole range of things. We want to talk about the missile proliferation activity and the missile threat to the South. We want to talk about the agreed framework and their obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty to allow the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] to implement the safeguards agreements that they've been not implementing for several years. We want to talk about the disposition of forces on the Korean peninsula. We want to talk about their human rights record. You know, we have a lot to talk to them about.

I think the secretary also said when he was in Korea that he was hopeful that Kim Jong Il would reciprocate Kim Dae Jung's visit to Pyongyang by coming to Seoul in the near future. And so we're ready to go and we just haven't heard back from them.

Q: How serious, in your view, is the issue of the transfer of weapons and sensitive technology from Russia to Iran? What steps are being taken to deal with it?

Mr. Bolton: Well, I think it's very sensitive, in part because looking to have a new strategic framework with the Russians basically says to them there's a lot we can do together, a lot we should do together, but we can't do it, in effect, if you're helping to supply technologies and equipment to a state that we consider a threat to us and to many of our closest allies. And we have raised this with the Russians. The president raised it in the Slovenia meeting. Secretary Powell raised it when Foreign Minister Ivanov came here in May. And at that visit, he also brought my counterpart, Georgiy Mamedov. We then had another two-hour meeting, half of which was on Russian proliferation activities in Iran. And I expect when I go to Moscow later this month, we'll talk about it as well.

So, I mean, we've been raising it in a range of different forums, and not just because of the specifics of Iran, but because of what it says about Russian policy generally and the kind of relationship we hope to have with them. It's hard to predict where it will come out, but it's certainly a range of issues we've discussed with them.

Q: What about the efforts by Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi to obtain chemical weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, which have long been a major concern to the U.S.? How significant do you see this issue now, and how is the Bush administration approaching it?

Mr. Bolton: We've released in public discussion our view that, particularly since the lifting of the U.N. Security Council sanctions because of the Pan Am 103 case, Qadhafi has been aggressively trying to acquire technologies that could provide him with ballistic missile and WMD [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities, and we regard it as a very serious threat and something that we will be keeping an extremely close eye on. One of the reasons that we have not moved to more normal relations with Libya is, in part, because of Pan Am 103 and the fact that he has yet to acknowledge responsibility. Even in turning over the two defendants, he extracted an agreement from the U.N. that he would not have to cooperate fully, and there's really not been a complete investigation of Qadhafi's own involvement in Pan Am 103. When he began to think he was getting out of the international dog house, his reaction was to go and seek capabilities for WMD, which doesn't suggest he's fully internalized the lessons that he should have learned.

Q: We have been involved in helping Russia to destroy its stock of chemical weapons. What exactly has been our role in this, and what's the future of this effort?

Mr. Bolton: This is another subject we want to discuss with the Russians because they've said they perceive difficulties in meeting the targets, the destruction targets that are contemplated in the Chemical Weapons Convention, which would pose a further problem under the CWC in terms of its implementation.

We've been willing and have put up substantial amounts of money for destruction purposes. To destroy the weapons in a responsible fashion is not easy and it's not cheap, and we understand they've got economic constraints they face, and so we and other Westerners have been willing to put up funds to create the facility, where you destroy chemical weapons safely. But I think there's concern in Congress and concern in Western Europe that the Russians are not as enthusiastic about this as maybe we are, and concern that we're providing them with funds, that allows them to divert funds for other purposes, money being fungible.

I remain hopeful that the Russians will remain just as intent as we are on complying with the Chemical Weapons Convention, on destroying their stocks. And I think we're prepared to support additional U.S. resources to help them do that, assuming we can see the level of commitment from them that we need, and assuming that some of our European friends, in particular, put up some financial resources as well.

If it were a question of a little bit of additional resources or a little bit of flexibility on the deadlines of the convention, I don't see that as a big problem. I think it would be a bigger problem if we came to the conclusion that they just didn't intend to comply at all. That would have implications for the new strategic framework as well. So that's one of the reasons we remain optimistic, is we think they do want to develop a new framework, and obviously compliance with the CWC would be part of that.

Q: What benefits do you see from the program of action that was approved at the recent U.N. Conference on Small Arms and Light Weapons and what future steps does the U.S. envision, either alone or in concert with other nations, to address the problem of the illicit trafficking in small arms?

Mr. Bolton: I think one of the major points that we wanted to make in New York was that there were activities that the U.N. could undertake that would be useful in the international arena to help control the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons, and that one of the things we were concerned about was getting diverted into domestic policy gun control debates.

There are obviously two sides to the gun control question. It's very actively debated in this country. It was debated before the conference, it will be debated after the conference. It's not going to go away by the activity up there. Instead, the focus on domestic issues actually would detract from attention to the legitimate international activities that could be undertaken to control small arms trafficking. And we talked about a number of them: the enforcement of Security Council embargoes of small arms and light weapons to regions of conflict, taking steps to protect peacekeepers and humanitarian workers as they've been deployed, looking to limit the illicit traffic in arms to regions of conflict, all of which are legitimate international activities that we've supported in terms of weapons destruction programs and participation in embargoes, participation in peacekeeping, support for humanitarian efforts. There's a lot that can be done in that sphere.

So I see lots of possibilities for follow-on activities I expect we'll be very much involved in. Where I don't think we'll be involved is in attempting to take what is fundamentally a matter of domestic politics and trying to internationalize it.