Bush softens pill of missile defence scheme

Calling for "vision" and a new way of thinking about global security, President Bush committed himself again yesterday to a controversial programme of missile defence, but also promised a major cutback in the US nuclear arsenal.

Pledging genuine consultations with allies, Mr Bush, said the US would "lead by example" in reducing its stockpiles. He urged allies to redouble efforts to stop proliferation.

Mr Bush, speaking at the Pentagon's National Defence University, did not explicitly announce his intention to repudiate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (ABM). He said it was outdated and "based on mutual vulnerability", the strategy that the best way to deter attack was to leave each side open to nuclear attack. "Security is more than the ability to destroy those who seek to destroy us," he said.

He called on Russia to work with the US to replace the treaty and promised to send high-level representatives next week to Europe, Asia, Canada and Australia to explain his proposals.

But he failed to be specific about which of several models of missile defence he will back, a time-frame, or the huge costs involved. A land-based system, favoured by the last administration, is priced by experts at close to $60 billion. Huge technical problems have to be overcome also, with experts talking of 10 years of development before deployment.

Ahead of his speech the President spoke over the last few days to NATO allies and yesterday to the deeply hostile Russian leader, Mr Vladimir Putin.

His message to Chancellor Gerhard Schroder of Germany, President Jacques Chirac of France, the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, the Canadian Prime Minister, Mr Jean Chretien, and the NATO Secretary-General, Mr George Robertson, was that of his election campaign - it was time to think "conceptually different".

That was the message too last night. In the post-Cold War world, he argued, deterrence and the classic doctrine of mutually assured destruction are no longer central to the real strategic challenge of protecting against accidental launches or a rogue state. Now was the time to move strategically from a system based purely on offence to one also providing defence.

Mr Bush's thinking on the reduction of the US's arsenal of nuclear weapons, the sugar on the pill of his missile defence strategy, is genuinely radical - with aides talking of cuts from 7,200 to as few as 1,500, but still enough to destroy the world many times over.