Bush tript to Moscow looks tense

Bush trip to Moscow looks tense
International Herald Tribune, France - 8 hours ago
... Stephen Sestanovich, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Russia specialist in Bill Clinton's ... But he termed Bush's trip even more difficult

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Latvia prepares to host Bush, first stop on Eastern European tour
Kansas City Star, MO - 4 hours ago
... The Latvia visit is also designed to send a message to another trip host: Russia. Bush, who has criticized Russia for backsliding on democracy,
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/11574575.htm

Rice to visit Russia to prepare for Bush's trip
Xinhua, China - Apr 8, 2005
... week for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials in preparation for US President George W. Bush's trip to Russia next month. ...
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-04/09/content_2806233.htm

U.S. Rejects Idea of Ban on Nuclear Attack
By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent
May 5, 2005, 4:03 PM EDT

UNITED NATIONS -- The plea heard from the conference floor, from nation after nation, seems simple: Since we don't have nuclear weapons, please guarantee you won't use yours on us.

It's the U.S. response -- no -- that isn't so simple, entangled as it is in the secret plans and dark visions of nuclear strategists.

Demands for a treaty enshrining such guarantees are a major issue before the U.N. conference that opened this week to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the 1970 pact by which more than 180 nations renounce atomic bombs forever in exchange for a pledge by five nuclear powers to eventually get rid of theirs.

Many disarmament experts believe the treaty negotiators of the 1960s erred by not embedding such "negative security assurances" -- against nuclear attacks on non-nuclear states -- in the original treaty, making the guarantees binding under international law.

The world's vulnerable have been trying to catch up ever since.

At conference after conference, scores of governments, from Switzerland to South Korea, have called for a treaty on "NSAs." Before the current conference, its Brazilian president, Sergio de Queiroz Duarte, made his own appeal for action on the issue in 2005.

Such legally binding assurances "would go a long way to reduce incentives for proliferation," he said.

As if to underscore that point, the Iranians, accused by Washington of being "proliferators" bent on building nuclear weapons, took to the conference floor to say security assurances from the nuclear powers, including their American adversary, would help keep others from reaching for the bomb.

Iran's foreign minister called for action now. It "needs to be materialized in this conference," Kamal Kharrazi told the delegates.

In fact, action was supposed to be taken now. The last Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review, in 2000, decided by consensus that experts should develop recommendations for "NSAs" to be considered at the 2005 conference. But because of later opposition by three nuclear powers -- the United States, Britain and France -- no recommendations were made.

Why?

"Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have taken the position that that would be a bad idea," chief U.S. delegate Stephen G. Rademaker said of the treaty idea in an interview.

Over the years, U.S. officials have laid out a key rationale: The United States wants to retain the right to use nuclear weapons against a country, even a non-nuclear one, that attacks it with chemical or biological weapons. Proposals for a U.S. nuclear "bunker buster" bomb, for instance, focus on such a target, an underground chemical-biological arsenal.

A growing terrorist threat, including a chemical-biological threat, makes the American position even more necessary, said U.S. delegation spokesman Richard Grenell. "We want to be creative with the tools we have at our disposal," he said.

Not all nuclear powers agree. The Russians say they're willing to negotiate on NSAs, and China, which favors total nuclear disarmament, sees negative security assurances as a valuable interim measure. In fact, the Chinese submitted a paper to the conference on Wednesday calling for negotiation of an NSA treaty "without delay."

In 1995, all five recognized nuclear powers under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty declared in the U.N. Security Council that they would not turn their nuclear weapons on nonweapons states. The statements don't carry treaty-like legal obligations, however, and U.S. and British statements have since weakened the 1995 position.

But now lesser powers are finding another way to build a shield against a nuclear threat: the "nuclear weapons-free zones" coming into force over large swaths of the globe.

These treaties commit a region's states to keeping nuclear arms out, and come with legally binding protocols attached, by which big powers also agree to view these zones as off-limits to their nuclear weapons.

Three "nuke-free" zones are in force -- covering Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, and Southeast Asia -- and two are pending, in Africa and Central Asia. If all were in effect, and all weapons states ratified the protocols, more than half the world's nations would have "backdoor" security assurances.

But the United States refuses to ratify the South Pacific and Southeast Asia protocols, which would keep the Navy and other U.S. forces from crisscrossing much of the globe with nuclear weapons aboard.

An American aversion to such international agreements is growing stronger, said arms-control scholar Leonard S. Spector, of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

"It's the cautious approach of the Bush administration," he said. "They don't want to accept any restriction on American flexibility."

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-un-nuclear-not-so-simple,0,5844714.story

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By The Associated Press
The Associated Press
Wednesday, May 4, 2005; 3:31 AM

-- THE CELEBRATION: President Bush joins Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders in Moscow to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.

BEHIND THE SCENES: Bush is making time to visit two former Soviet republics, Latvia and Georgia, to promote democracy in Eastern Europe _ even though they remain at odds with Putin's Russia.

A FINE LINE: It's a diplomatic tightrope for Bush. U.S. relations with Russia are already tense, yet both countries know they must cooperate to deal with challenges from North Korea and Iran.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/04/AR2005050400297.html