US wants to move US-Russian relations away from threats of mutual annihilation: Wolfowitz

WASHINGTON, May 4 (AFP) -

The United States wants to move away from a relationship with Russia that is based on Cold War threats of mutual annihilation, and is prepared to defend Russia against ballistic missiles, a presidential envoy on missile defense said Friday.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who departs next week for Europe to sell the allies and Russia on President George W. Bush's missile defense plans, said he expected the talks in Moscow to be "the most difficult and pointed discussions we'll have."

"I think that rather than making mutual annihilation the basis of our relationship, we ought to work at reducing mutual vulnerabilities. And that is what we ought to be able to persuade the Russians of," Wolfowitz said in a speech here to the American Jewish Committee.

"We have no interest in seeing Russia vulnerable to missile attack, nor do I think we should tolerate any longer than we have to have Los Angeles, or Chicago, or New York or even Washington D.C. vulnerable to missile attack. It's not a good thing. It not a healthy world," he said.

In a speech Tuesday at the National Defense University, Bush announced his intention to move beyond the 1972 ABM treaty in pursuing an expansive missile defense system. At the same time, he said the United States would reduce US strategic nuclear weapons to the lowest possible level.

He tapped Wolfowitz, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to visit European and Asian capitals next week to consult with US allies, Russia and China on US missile defense plans.

Hadley was to go first to Brussels and London and then join up with Wolfowitz for talks in Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Moscow. Armitage was to lead the consultations in Asia.

Russia, China and many European allies have expressed vivid concerns about abandoning the ABM treaty, which bans the deployment of a national missile defense system.

The treaty, a cornerstone of US-Russian arms control and reduction regimes, has kept the nuclear peace by ensuring neither country could launch a nuclear attack without suffering massive retaliation.

But Wolfowitz said "we as a country also ought to put the Cold War behind."

"We need in our relationship with Russia to get the nuclear dimension out of that relationship. We shouldn't be saying that the centerpiece of the US-Russian relationship is the ability of our two countries to annihilate one another with nuclear weapons," he said.

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