RUSSIA - Aug. 13 - Rumsfeld Visits.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on his first mission to Moscow for the Bush administration, meets Pres. Putin and Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov for daylong talks. Welcoming Rumsfeld and his delegation, Putin says the 1972 ABM Treaty is unequivocally a part of the security relationship between the two countries, and is bundled with current treaties limiting nuclear arsenals. He says: "For us, it is unconditionally linked with both the START-2 and START-1 treaties. I would like to underline that". During his meeting with Rumsfeld, Ivanov says any deployment of missile defences must be tightly linked to a plan for reducing warheads, adding: "The ABM Treaty is one of the major important elements of the complex of international treaties on which the international stability is based... The existing multi-layered system of strategic security... fully meets the needs of Russia". Rumsfeld says: "We do have a specific proposal, and that is that the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty be set aside and new arrangements between our two countries be established so that we will in fact be able to take steps to no longer be vulnerable to handfuls of ballistic missiles". Responding to Putin's statement that Moscow and Washington should hold detailed and formal negotiations on arms control issues, Rumsfeld says the absence of Cold War hostilities between the two nations makes such arms negotiations as unnecessary as they would be with Mexico, Canada, Britain or other friendly nations. (Pres. Bush, after meeting Putin in Genoa in July, ordered his national security team to move ahead with rolling consultations with Moscow on deploying missile defence and reducing arsenals. But Washington has said it is not interested in any grand or formal bargains. Bush envisions a framework of relations that would dispose of treaties and seek to more broadly and more loosely bind the US and Russia with economic and trade, as well as military, ties). Rumsfeld says he will not be able to discuss specific proposals for cutting the US offensive nuclear arsenal on this trip, because the Pentagon's strategic posture review now under way will be completed only "in the next month or two". Asked to describe the direction the nuclear posture review would push the US arsenal, Rumsfeld says: "The numbers are not, you know four or five, six, seven, eight thousand weapons. The numbers are much lower. There is no doubt in my mind that we'll be able to go down to substantially lower numbers". (The current START-2 treaty would cut the arsenals of each country by half to about 3,500 warheads, but Moscow has been arguing for deeper cuts). Rumsfeld says the US cannot possibly brief Moscow officials on its exact plans for a missile defence architecture that is in the initial stages of research, development and testing. The mission of Rumsfeld is to illustrate the US administration's broader approach to security ties with Moscow and to repeat Washington's resolve in scrapping the ABM Treaty. Earlier in the day, meeting with Russian defence correspondents, Rumsfeld said: "Think of how we've changed in terms of our conventional forces. There isn't any reason we can't change in terms of our nuclear forces. And if we can do all that, there isn't any reason we can't start changing the minds of some of the people who seem locked into the Cold War. They fell in love with it. They can't get over it. They want to keep talking about it. They want to have all the old structures that fit it and perpetuate it. Well, I don't". (On his way to Moscow on Aug. 12, Rumsfeld said Moscow is unlikely to drop its opposition to US missile defense plan anytime soon but eventually will want such defences of its own. He said: "I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the people of Russia had become fans of missile defence" in 10 years. "People's attitudes about this are going to change").