Bush pulls out of ABM treaty

In a move that will sow doubts among its allies about the real commitment of the US to international coalition-building, the US yesterday for the first time withdrew from an international agreement, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

A draft EU statement being prepared last night by the Belgian presidency is understood to express "concern" at the decision and to appeal to the US not to turn its back on the multilateral international arms control system. Unilateral moves should contribute to enhancing, not destabilising, that system, the draft says. Announcing his formal notification to Russia of the US intent to repudiate the treaty in six months, President Bush insisted that "my friend" President Putin had assured him that the move would not harm the new burgeoning relationship between the two countries. Whatever the latter might say in public.

The US will now be able to procede with testing of its controversial missile defence system - the treaty prohibited the two countries from deploying such defences in order to maintain a credible deterrence system. Mr Putin said yesterday Washington's decision to quit the treaty was a mistake but did not threaten Russia's national security. In his first reaction to the announcement Mr Putin went on national television to say the decision had been widely anticipated and was no surprise.

But, touring Brazil, the Russian Prime Minister, Mr Mikhail Kasyanov, said ahead of the announcement that Moscow regretted the move. He acknowledged the US right to withdraw but said Russia still believes in a deal on a modified treaty. Mr Kasyanov said his nation supports the treaty for the sake of strategic stability, not because Moscow's defences would be weakened by the US withdrawal. Speculating on what steps Russia might take in response to the announcement, the chairman of Russia's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, Mr Dmitri Rogozin, warned that Moscow could renounce the START I and START II treaties.

China, with a nuclear arsenal small enough to be overwhelmed by a limited US anti-missile system, said that the US plans are cause for concern, and it has called for talks on the issue.

In his statement, delivered outside the White House, Mr Bush said that he could not allow the US ability to defend itself to be impeded by a treaty signed "at a much different in a much different world". One party to the agreement, the Soviet Union, no longer existed, he said, insisting that a relationship of hostility had now been replaced by one of increasing co-operation - "to replace mutually assured destruction with mutual co-operation".