Bush, Putin Promise to Reduce Strategic Nuclear Arsenal

U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that their countries will respectively cut the nuclear arsenal.

"I have informed President Putin that the United States will reduce our operationally deployed, strategic nuclear warheads to alevel between 1,700 to 2,200 within the next decade, a level fullyconsistent with American security," Bush said at a joint press conference with Putin after their talks at the White House.

The resulting force will be "fully consistent with American security," Bush said.

Bush said he and Putin retain differing viewpoints on the American plans to develop a missile defense shield, and "we will continue dialogue and discussion" on the subject.

He said he and Putin also had agreed to support a United Nations call for a "broadly based and multiethnic" government in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban.

"Russia and America share the same threat and share the same resolve" to battle terrorism, he said. "We will fight and defeat terrorist networks wherever" they exist, Bush added.

Meanwhile, Putin said that his country will try to respond in kind after Bush said he will cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal. But he gave no precise figures.

The United States currently has roughly 7,000 intercontinental nuclear warheads, while Russia has an estimated 5,800.

Putin said that he wanted a "reliable and verifiable agreement," appearing to differ with U.S. views that a complex strategic arms treaty was unnecessary.

He also said Russia had not modified its position on the U.S. missile defense program, which Russia opposes, but that talks would continue.

( Xinhua News Agency 11/13/2001)