US President George W. Bush said Tuesday that the terror attacks on New York and Washington three months ago made the building of a missile defense system more essential than ever, local reports said.
"We must protect America and our friends against all forms of terrorism including the terrorism that could arrive on a missile," Bush said in a speech at the Citadel, the state military college of South Carolina.
He recalled a speech he made at the college in September 1999, in which he warned against the threat of terror, among other things.
"I said here at the Citadel ... America was entering a period of consequences that would be defined by the threat of terrorism, and that we faced the challenge of military transformation," he said. "That threat has now revealed itself, and that challenge is now the military and moral necessity of our time.''
Smart bombs, missile defenses and unmanned spy craft are all necessary to crush the kind of terrorists who attacked the US on September 11, Bush said.
In a related development, US government officials said Tuesday that Bush will give Russia notice that the US is withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans testing of missile defense systems.
Moscow and Washington have been at odds over Bush's plan to build a missile defense system. Russia said developing such a system will violate the ABM treaty, but the US said the pact was signed during the Cold War period and is void and null under a new world order.
In the Citadel speech, Bush said the US "must move beyond" the 1972 treaty, describing it as "a treaty that was written in a different era, for a different enemy."
"America and our allies must not be bound to the past. We must be able to build the defenses we need against the enemies of the 21st century," he said.
( December 12,2001)
