Asked whether the action was taken to reward Russia for its support of the US air campaign in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said: "It's not a bone to anybody."

Rumsfeld reaffirmed the longstanding US position that the treaty should be set aside by the United States and Russia to allow unrestricted testing and development of defenses against ballistic missiles.

After the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, he said, the ABM treaty was "even less relevant today."

But Rumsfeld said talks next month between Bush and Putin in New York, Washington and at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas would take up the question of what to do about the treaty, which bars the deployment of a national missile defense system.

"For sometime now, we've advised the Congress and the government of the Russian Federation that the planned missile defense testing program that we had was going to bump up against the ABM Treaty," he said. "That has now happened."

"This reality, it seems to me, provides an impetus for the discussions that President Bush has been having with President Putin, and which will continue here in Washington early next month," he said.

In the first test, which had been scheduled for Wednesday, an Aegis radar on a surface ship was to be used to track an interceptor missile in test interception of a strategic ballistic missile target, he said.

The target missile was to have been tracked by a multiple target tracking radar at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

In the second test, scheduled for November 14, and Aegis radar was to have been used to track the launch of a Titan II space launch vehicle, he said.

Rumsfeld said all options -- modifying the treaty, setting it aside, or withdrawing from it unilaterally -- could be on the table.

Asked whether a deal could be worked out to modify the treaty to accommodate the US missile defense program and forestall a US withdrawal, Rumsfeld said, "I just don't know. We'll have to see what happens. But certainly those discussions are going forward."

In the meantime, he said, the Pentagon had decided to refrain voluntarily from carrying out the two scheduled tests that lawyers could construe as violations of the treaty.

The use of the Aegis radar on a surface ship would ostensibly run afoul of the treaty's ban on testing and development of sea-based components of a national missile defense system.

"We are continuing with many aspects of the very robust test development program," Rumsfeld said.

"But as I've indicated, there are some things that some people could raise, I do not want to put the United States in a position of having someone raise a question about whether or not something is a violation of a treaty. I don't think that's the position the United States wants to be in," he said.

Meanwhile, Russia has called for the ABM anti-missile treaty of 1972 to be "treated with the greatest care", on the same day Thursday, that the United States confirmed it wanted to abandon it altogether, reported Russia's Inter Tass agency citing the foreign affairs ministry.

Russia's approach "largely corresponds to the point of view of the majority of the country, which demands that the ABM treaty be treated with the greatest care, the same also goes for the international architecture of the disarmament and non-proliferation sectors," said the foreign affairs ministry.

US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld announced earlier in the day that the US had abandoned testing its anti-missile shield so as not to risk violating the ABM treaty before an accord is reached with Russia.

However, Rumsfeld reaffirmed the longstanding US position that the treaty should be set aside by both countries to allow future unrestricted testing and development of defences against ballistic missiles.

The Russian ministry, meanwhile, congratulated opposition Democratic senators in the US who recently voted in favour of keeping the ABM treaty.

The ministry finished by saying that Russia would stay faithful to a dialogue with the US which "looks to find an accord on the interdependent questions of defensive and offensive arms, one which would strengthen international stability and would answer the national security interests of not only Russia and the US but other countries too." Related Links
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