[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 85 (Tuesday, June 19, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H3251-H3257]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        PRESIDENT BUSH HAS HISTORIC MEETING WITH PRESIDENT PUTIN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to provide 
some information from the standpoint of one Member of Congress 
following President Bush's recent meeting with European leaders, and in 
particular with his historic meeting with Russian President Putin.
  I wanted to take out this special order for a number of reasons; 
first of all, to follow up on the discussions that were held by our 
President and the Russian president, and talk about the substance of 
those discussions; and also, on the eve of the visit of the first 
elected delegation to arrive in Washington following that summit, which 
I will host tomorrow with my colleagues, the gentleman from Maryland 
(Mr. Hoyer) and members of the Duma Congressional Study Group here in 
Washington. In fact we have the First Deputy Speaker of the Russian 
Duma, the highest elected official in the Duma, representing President 
Putin's party. And as the number two person of the Duma, she is the 
leader of the delegation here in Washington tonight.
  Mr. Speaker, the delegation of elected Russian leaders includes 
representation of political factions in the Duma, and are here to have 
formal discussions with us as a part of our ongoing dialogue. Over the 
past 9 years since forming the study group, we have had scores of 
meetings both in Washington and Moscow and throughout each of our 
respective countries trying to find common ground on key issues which 
face America and Russia.
  First, Mr. Speaker, let me follow the meeting that was held between 
our two Presidents. There were many who said American and Russian 
relations were in fact becoming sour; that because of actions, 
especially President Bush's speech on missile defense, that perhaps 
Russia was no longer willing to be a friend of ours.

                              {time}  2145

  There was a lot of speculation that perhaps President Bush did not 
have a sensitivity relative to our relations with Russia; that perhaps 
President Putin was taking Russia in a different direction; that in 
fact America and Russia were doomed to become enemies again; and that 
Russia in fact was moving to become a closer ally with China and 
enemies of Russia as opposed to being our friend.

[[Page H3252]]

  All during the past year in meeting with our new President, I was 
convinced that he understood what it would take to bring back a 
normalization of our relations. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that 
President Putin felt the same way. In fact, last summer I was contacted 
by the then chairman of President Putin's political party in the Duma, 
Boris Grislov. He contacted me because he wanted to come over and 
observe the Republican convention and build relationships between the 
Republican Party, and in particular our candidate, and the party of 
President Putin, the ``Edinstvo'' Faction or Unity Faction. I extended 
an invitation to Boris Grislov. He came to Philadelphia and spent the 
week with Members of Congress observing our convention, speaking to the 
Russian people through a media source that had come with him and 
understanding how our democracy worked and building ties with 
Republicans who were in Philadelphia.
  He came back again in January of this year, again at my invitation, 
to visit and to observe the inauguration of our new President. We got 
him special passes and he observed and witnessed the inauguration of 
George W. Bush. Then he hosted a delegation that I took along with the 
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) to Moscow approximately 10 weeks 
ago. The gentleman from Maryland and the delegation that traveled with 
us and I did an extensive 1-hour summary of that trip when we returned.
  The point is that President Putin and his party wanted to reach out 
and establish a new relationship. Even though the media was reporting a 
souring of relations between Russia and the U.S., I was convinced that 
in the end once President Bush met face to face with President Putin, 
we would have a new beginning. In fact, when I was on Air Force One 
with President Bush right before my trip to Moscow 9 weeks ago, I said 
to President Bush on the plane, Mr. President, if I have a chance to 
meet with President Putin, which I may, and I certainly will meet with 
his leaders, what do you want me to tell him?
  He said, Curt, you tell President Putin that I am looking forward to 
meeting him, that we have no quarrel with Russia, we want to be their 
friend. We have some differences, but we can work those out.
  That is exactly what happened in the meeting between President Putin 
and President Bush this past weekend. I think they have struck a 
relationship that is good for both countries and good for the world. 
Now, there are problems. In fact, there is a great deal of lack of 
trust on the part of the Russian side. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I would 
call the attention of my colleagues to this collage of photographs that 
I assembled from news sources of street scenes in downtown Moscow a 
little over a year ago. The scenes are not very positive. You see 
Russians throwing rocks at the American embassy in Moscow. You see 
young Russians holding up anti-USA signs. You see Russians putting a 
swastika on the American flag. And you see Russians burning the 
American flag. This was a part of a major demonstration of over 10,000 
Russians against America.
  Why did they do this? Was this because of President Bush's 
announcement about missile defense? No, Mr. Speaker. This demonstration 
occurred during the previous administration. Well, then why were they 
protesting so aggressively in the streets, because we have been led to 
believe that the Russian problem is with missile defense which 
President Bush announced we were moving aggressively into? That is not 
the problem that has caused a lack of trust in Russia, Mr. Speaker. It 
is a combination of several factors, the results of which President 
Bush has inherited.
  First of all, the Russians were not properly briefed when we expanded 
NATO a few short years ago to get the full picture that NATO was not 
the natural enemy of Russia any longer. Now, President Bush went to 
great lengths on this recent trip to explain to the Russian people and 
the Russian leaders that NATO was not meant to be the enemy of Russia 
any longer and that in fact NATO expansion was meant to provide a more 
secure Europe. In fact, President Bush left the door open that, one 
day, if Russia chose and if she met the criteria, she too could become 
a member of NATO. But when we expanded NATO a few years ago, that was 
not the case. The Russian people were given the feeling by the way we 
mishandled it that perhaps it was an attempt to bring in those former 
Soviet allies and now make them enemies of Russia.
  The second reason why the people in Moscow were demonstrating is 
because of the war in Kosovo. Russians were convinced that that war 
caused a tremendous loss of innocent lives, of innocent Serbs. Mr. 
Speaker, as you well know, myself and a group of our colleagues also 
disagree with the way that we got involved in the Kosovo conflict. It 
was not that we liked Milosevic. It was not that we thought Milosevic 
was some kind of a person that we should respect and honor. We felt 
that he was as much of a thug and a corrupt individual and leader as 
everyone else did in this body.

  But our reason for disagreeing with the leadership of President 
Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain in going in and 
attacking the former Yugoslavia was that we had not given Russia a 
chance to use its influence in getting Milosevic out of power 
peacefully. In fact, Mr. Speaker, I was the one that led an 11-member 
delegation of five Democrats and five Republicans and myself to Vienna 
where we met with leaders of the Russian Duma from all the factions 
along with those who support Milosevic, and we were able to work out 
the framework that became the basis of the G-8 agreement that 
eventually ended that conflict peacefully.
  The Russians, and myself included, believe we could have ended that 
war and should have ended it much earlier, in fact should never have 
begun it in the first place and should have allowed and actually should 
have encouraged Russia, should have forced Russia to play a more 
aggressive role in peacefully removing Milosevic from power, not one 
year after we began the bombing but a matter of weeks after the allied 
nations would have worked with Russia. That was a second reason that 
the Russian people lost confidence in us.
  But I think perhaps the most important reason the Russian people lost 
confidence in us is because over the past 5 years, they know that we 
saw billions of dollars of IMF money, International Monetary Fund 
money, World Bank money and in some cases U.S. taxpayer dollars going 
into Russia for legitimate purposes but ending up being siphoned off by 
corrupt leaders who in fact were friends of Boris Yeltsin, by corrupt 
institutions that were led by the oligarchs that had been hand-selected 
by Boris Yeltsin.
  In fact, Mr. Speaker, 4 and 5 years ago, we were aware that 
corruption was running rampant in Moscow. We were made aware as Members 
of Congress that those people hand picked by Yeltsin to run the banking 
system in Russia were corruptly taking money that was supposed to 
benefit Russia's people and instead putting it in U.S. real estate 
investments and Swiss bank accounts. The problem was, Mr. Speaker, that 
our policy for the past 8 years under the previous administration with 
Russia was based on a personal friendship between President Clinton and 
President Yeltsin. Now, I am not against personal friendships. In fact, 
I think it is helpful; and hopefully President Bush and President Putin 
will become close friends. But President Clinton had become such a 
close friend of Boris Yeltsin that our whole policy for 8 years was 
based on keeping Yeltsin in power. When we had evidence that there was 
rampant corruption around Yeltsin, we should have done the right thing. 
We should have questioned Yeltsin directly, and we should have called 
him into a public accounting for the billions of dollars of money, much 
of it backed by the U.S. government and U.S. taxpayers, that was 
supposed to help the Russian people reform their economy and society 
but instead was benefiting Boris' personal friends. But we did not do 
that. We pretended we did not see it. We pretended that we did not know 
about it.
  That is why, Mr. Speaker, in the 2 months before Boris Yeltsin 
resigned his position, the popularity polls in Moscow and throughout 
Russia showed that Yeltsin's popularity was only 2 percent. Only 2 
percent of the Russian people supported him. But guess who else 
supported him, the President and Vice President of the United States.

[[Page H3253]]

 We were still supporting a man that almost every Russian believed was 
corrupt and had a severe alcohol problem. And as we all know, Mr. 
Speaker, when Yeltsin finally resigned, one of the conditions for his 
resignation was that the new President, President Putin, in his first 
official act would have to give a blanket pardon to Boris Yeltsin and 
his entire family. That is exactly what President Putin did. His first 
official act was to pardon President Yeltsin and his family, because 
the Russian people and leaders in the Duma wanted to go after Yeltsin 
and those oligarchs for stealing billions of dollars of money that 
should have gone to help the Russian people.
  Further evidence of this were the indictments handed down by the 
Justice Department in New York just 2 years ago, in the Bank of New 
York scandal, where the Justice Department has alleged in public 
documents that individuals in Russia and the U.S. were involved in 
siphoning off up to $5 billion of IMF money that should have gone to 
the Russian people. So a third reason why these Russians were rampaging 
in the streets against America was because they felt that America let 
them down.
  Now, if you believe the national news media and some of the liberals 
in this city, including my colleagues in this body and some in the 
other body, they would have you believe that our problem with Russia 
today is all about missile defense.

  Tonight I want to talk about missile defense, Mr. Speaker, because 
that is not a problem with Russia. It is not a problem at least the way 
President Bush wants to move forward with missile defense. Some will 
say, Well, the Russians do not want us to move forward on missile 
defense. The Russians do not want us to have that capability. The fact 
of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, that Russia has had a missile defense 
system protecting Moscow and 75 percent of the Russian people for the 
last 25 years. In fact, they have upgraded that system at least three 
times and have improved it in terms of accuracy and guidance systems. 
We have no such missile defense system.
  Why would we not have one, Mr. Speaker? Well, the ABM treaty which 
was negotiated back in 1972 was based on mutually assured deterrence, 
also called mutually assured destruction. At that time there were only 
two major superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States. We each 
had offensive missiles with nuclear warheads on top. And so we dared 
each other. You attack us and we will wipe you out with a 
counterattack. And if we attack you, we know that you will wipe us out 
with a counterattack.
  So deterrence was the strategic relationship between two superpowers 
from 1972 on. But that ABM treaty allowed one missile defense system in 
each country. The original treaty allowed two, but it was modified 
after a short period of time to only allow each country to build one 
missile defense system. That one system could only protect one city. 
Russia, because of its geography and because of its control by a 
Communist dictatorship picked Moscow. It just so happened in the former 
Soviet Union that Moscow and the environment around Moscow has about 75 
percent of the Russian people. So it was fairly easy politically for 
the Communists in the Soviet Union to decide to protect Moscow with an 
ABM system, an antiballistic missile system. The people in the far east 
in the Soviet Union were not happy because they were left vulnerable. 
But if you are controlled by a Communist dictatorship, it does not 
matter what the people in the far east think. The Communist leadership 
determines which city will be protected. So Moscow was protected.
  Now, over here in America we are a democracy. Our leaders could not 
politically pick one city. Which city would we pick? New York? Dallas? 
Los Angeles? Seattle? If we picked one city to protect, every other 
part of America would say, wait a minute. This is a democracy, a 
representative government where all of us are equal. You cannot pick 
one city and only protect one group of people. And besides, our 
population is not based in one area. So the ABM treaty, even though it 
did call and did allow for security through deterrence, did not allow 
America to provide a level of protection that Russian people have had 
for the past 25 years.

                              {time}  2200

  The difference is that today we no longer live in a world with two 
superpowers. The Soviet Union does not even consider itself to be a 
superpower today, even though they have major offensive weapons. So 
there is one superpower left, and that is us.
  The problem with the ABM treaty is that today we have other nations 
that have the same offensive capability that perhaps the U.S. and 
Russia have had over the past 30 years. On August 30 of 1998, North 
Korea did something that even the CIA was not aware they had the 
capability to do. They launched a three-stage missile up into the 
atmosphere over Japan. The CIA has acknowledged publicly that they were 
not aware that North Korea had a three-stage rocket potential. Even 
though that test did not go to completion, when the CIA analysts 
projected how far that missile could have traveled they have now said 
publicly it could reach the shores of the western part of the U.S. It 
could not carry a very heavy payload and it might not be very accurate, 
but if one of those North Korean missiles had a small chemical 
biological or small nuclear warhead, it could hit the western part of 
the United States. That is the first time in the history of North Korea 
that a rogue state has had the capability to hit our country directly, 
and we have no defense against that.
  Now it is not that we think that North Korea will attack us, because 
most of us do not. But let us imagine a scenario where North Korea 
might not be on friendly terms with South Korea, and we have seen 
evidence of that over the past several decades, and perhaps North Korea 
would attack South Korea. Whereupon, America would come in to help 
defend South Korea because of treaty relations. What if North Korea's 
leaders then said to our President, if you do not remove your troops 
from the Korean Peninsula we are going to nuke one of your western 
cities? For the first time in the history of the existence of North 
Korea, we now know they have that capability. It might not be a very 
accurate missile. They might aim for Los Angeles and hit Portland, but 
it does not matter. They have that capability.
  What would be our President's response? Would we go in preemptively 
and nuke North Korea and wipe out all their capabilities and kill 
innocent people, even though they had not attacked us? Or would we wait 
until they launched the missile, which we could not defend against, and 
then counterattack and wipe out North Korea? Which course would our 
President take, Mr. Speaker?
  It presents a kind of dilemma that we never want our President to be 
in. But it is not just a rogue state like North Korea. Iran has now 
been working on a system, the Shahab-III, Shahab-IV and Shahab-V, which 
now possesses a capability of sending a missile about 2,500 kilometers. 
That covers a good part of Europe. Iran is also working on a missile 
system called the Shahab-V. That system will have a range, we think, of 
5,000 kilometers. Iran's goal is to develop a long-range missile to 
eventually hit the U.S. Iraq has a similar goal, and they have improved 
their SCUD missile three or four times. They eventually want to have a 
capability to use against America.
  So we now have other nations that are unstable nations building 
missiles that within 5 to 10 years will be able to hit the U.S. for 
which we have no defense. But it is not just those unstable nations, 
Mr. Speaker, that we are concerned about. President Bush and Members of 
Congress who support missile defense do not for a minute believe that 
Russia will attack us. That is not the case. Our colleagues do not 
believe that China will attack us for that matter.
  Let me say what is a concern, Mr. Speaker, and it deals with a 
missile that I am going to put up on the easel right now.
  This photograph, Mr. Speaker, is a Russian SS-25 long-range missile. 
You can see it is carried on what basically is a tractor-trailer with a 
number of wheels and tires. This missile, when put in the launch 
position, when the launch codes are entered, is pre-programmed to an 
American city and can travel 10,000 kilometers at an approximate time 
of 25 minutes from the time it is launched to landing on that American 
city which it has been pre-programmed to strike. Now, the exact

[[Page H3254]]

number is classified, but I can say unclassified that Russia has over 
400 of these mobile launched SS-25s. Part of their doctrine is to drive 
them all over their territory so that we do not know where those 
missiles are at any given time, so there is an act of surprise there, 
an element of surprise if Russia would need to attack us. It is a basic 
part of their ICBM fleet.
  Now we do not think that Russia will launch these against us 
deliberately, but let me give you, Mr. Speaker, an incident that did 
occur in Moscow and in Russia in 1995. Norway, in January of 1995, was 
going to launch a weather rocket into the atmosphere to sample weather 
conditions. So the Norwegian government notified the Russian government 
right next door, do not worry; this missile we are launching is not in 
any way offensive to you. It is simply a scientific experiment for us 
to sample upper atmospheric conditions for proper weather reporting.

  Because of Russia's economic problems, Mr. Speaker, and because of 
Russia's lack of improving its sensing systems, when the Norwegians 
launched that rocket they misread it in Russia. The Russian military 
thought it was an attack from an American nuclear submarine. So when 
Norway launched their rocket for weather purposes, the Russian military 
misread that launch and thought it was an attack from a nuclear 
submarine off their coast. So the Russian leadership did what they 
would do if they were being attacked. They put their ICBM fleet on 
alert, which meant they were within a matter of minutes to launching 
one missile pre-programmed against an American city. That was their 
response.
  The week after this incident occurred, President Yeltsin was asked by 
the Russian media, what happened, President Yeltsin? He acknowledged 
that this took place. He said, yes, it was only one of two times that 
ICBMs were put on full alert, but it worked; our system worked. I 
overruled, he said, our defense minister Pavel Grachev and I overruled 
the general in terms of our command staff, General Kalisnikov, and I 
called off the launch.
  Mr. Speaker, estimates are that Russia was within 7 minutes of 
accidentally launching a 10,000 kilometer ICBM that would have hit an 
American city.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, let us think for a moment. What if that launch 
would have occurred and what if it occurred under President Putin? Let 
us imagine a White House conversation between the two presidents. 
President Putin picks up the red phone, linking him directly up with 
Washington, and he gets President Bush on the phone and he says, Mr. 
President, we have had a terrible accident. One of our long-range 
missiles has been launched accidentally. Please forgive us.
  What does President Bush then do? Well, he has two choices. He can 
then issue a launch code for one of our missiles to take out one of 
Russia's cities in retaliation. That would end up in perhaps a half 
million people being killed in both countries, or he could perhaps go 
on national TV and tell the American people in the city where that 
missile was heading that they have 25 minutes to move.
  The fact is, Mr. Speaker, today America has no system to shoot down 
an incoming missile. We have no capability to shoot down a missile once 
it has been launched.
  If, likewise, one of these units controlling an SS-25 were to somehow 
get the launch codes for that missile and launch that missile, again we 
have no defense against that accident.
  Mr. Speaker, that is why President Bush has said America must deploy 
missile defense. That is why this Congress voted with a veto-proof 
margin 2 years ago in favor of my bill, H.R. 4, to declare it our 
national law that we will deploy missile defense. It was not to back 
Russia into a corner. It was not to escalate an arms race. It was to 
give us protection against a threat that we do not now have.
  Now, the liberal opponents of missile defense will say, well, wait a 
minute, Congressman Weldon, the threat, and I heard the chairman of the 
Senate Foreign Relations Committee say this on Sunday, there is a more 
likely threat of a truck bomb coming into our cities.
  That is a little bit disingenuous, Mr. Speaker, because the chairman 
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee knows full well that over the 
past 6 years the Congress has plussed up funding for dealing with 
weapons of mass destruction more than what the President asked for each 
year. We are spending hundred of millions of dollars on new detection 
systems, new intelligence systems, on dealing with weapons of mass 
destruction that could be brought in by terrorist groups. We are not 
ignoring that threat, but, Mr. Speaker, the facts are there. The 
largest loss of American military life in the past 10 years was when a 
low complexity SCUD missile was fired by Saddam Hussein into an 
American military barracks in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia. America let down 
our sons and daughters. Twenty-eight young Americans came home in body 
bags because we could not defend against a low complexity SCUD missile.

  When Saddam Hussein chose to destroy American lives, he did not pick 
a truck bomb. He did not pick a chemical agent. He picked a SCUD 
missile, which he has now enhanced four times. When Saddam Hussein 
chose to kill innocent Jews in Israel, he did not pick truck bombs. He 
did not pick biological weapons. He sent SCUD missiles into Israel, and 
killed and injured hundreds of innocent Jews.
  The facts are easily understood, Mr. Speaker. The weapon of choice is 
the missile. Today throughout the world, over 70 nations possess 
cruise, medium- and long-range missiles. Twenty-two nations today 
around the world are building these missiles. All the major unstable 
nations are building missile systems today because they want to use 
them and threaten to use them against America, our allies and our 
troops.
  Now others will say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. This system 
will not work. Mr. Speaker, facts again do not support that notion. 
There have been 31 major tests of missile defense systems by our 
military over the past 5 years, 31 tests. These tests were with our 
Army program called THAAD, our PAC III program, the Enhanced Patriot, 
our Navy program, called Navy Area Wide Navy Upper Tier, and our 
national missile defense program, 31 tests. Now we had failures, I will 
acknowledge that, but, Mr. Speaker, the failures were not of hitting a 
bullet with a bullet. The failures were when we could not get the 
rocket into the atmosphere.
  Now, that problem was solved by Wernher von Braun 40 years ago. If we 
use that as a reason to stop missile defense, then we better shut down 
our space program, because the same rocket technology that launches our 
satellites and our astronauts into outer space is the exact same 
technology we use for missile defense. So if we think that those 
failures should stop missile defense, then we should shut down Cape 
Kennedy, because it is the same rocket science.
  The fact is, Mr. Speaker, of the 16 times of the 31 tests, where the 
seeker reached a level where it could see the target up in the 
atmosphere, 16 times, 14 of those times we hit a missile with a 
missile. We hit a bullet with a bullet. So our success rate has been 14 
out of 16 times we have been able to hit a bullet with a bullet, 
proving that the technology is, in fact, at hand.

                              {time}  2215

  Last week, Mr. Speaker, General Kadish, the head of our Ballistic 
Missile Defense Organization, a three-star general, testified, and I 
asked the question, general, is the technology here today? He said, 
absolutely, Congressman. We understand and have the technology worked 
out.
  I said, is it an engineering challenge now? He said, that is the 
challenge. It is engineering, a group of systems, the queuing system, 
the radar system, the Seeker itself, to work together to take out that 
missile when it is on the ascent phase heading toward our country or 
our troops. So it is not a technology problem, it is an engineering 
challenge.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, some of the opponents of missile defense will say, 
well, wait a minute. You can defeat missile defense by having decoys. 
Any nation that we would try to defend against would simply build 
decoys. These would be balloons so that you would not be able to tell 
the warhead from the balloon.
  That is an easy argument for people to make, but it does not hold 
water, Mr. Speaker. It is disingenuous. Because if we have countries 
that the liberals say cannot build missile systems

[[Page H3255]]

because they do not have the capability, how can we expect those same 
countries to be able to build technologies that would allow them to 
have decoys?
  We tried to build decoys ourselves, and we are the most equipped 
nation in the world technologically. We have had problems building 
decoys. So you cannot say a foreign nation can build decoys that we 
cannot even build as a reason not to move forward with missile defense.
  Now, we understand the challenge of being able to differentiate the 
actual warhead from a decoy. It is a challenge we have not yet totally 
solved. But, Mr. Speaker, even if we move for aggressive deployment 
today, we will not have a system in place for at least 5 years. We are 
on a time frame to solve the challenge of decoys during that time frame 
of deployment.
  Now, some say the system would cost too much money. Mr. Speaker, the 
cost for missile defense is approximately 1 percent of our defense 
budget. One percent. Not our total budget, of our defense budget.
  Now, we are building new airplanes to replace older ones, we are 
building new ships to replace older ships. We are building all kinds of 
new tanks and ammunition to replace older ones. But missile defense 
does not exist today. One percent of our defense budget to build 
defenses against missile systems is not too much to ask.
  I would say to my colleagues, if you believe cost is a factor, then 
what price do you put on Philadelphia, or on Los Angeles, or on 
Washington, D.C.? Is it worth $1 billion? Is it worth $100 million? 
What price do we put on a city that could be wiped out from one missile 
launched into our country?
  So price is not an issue. Technology is not an issue. Well, then what 
is the issue? Is it the Russians? Yes, we want to reassure Russia that 
this is not meant to threaten them. Do the Russians not trust us today 
on missile defense?
  Mr. Speaker, the answer is yes. But, you know, Mr. Speaker, if I were 
a Russian today, I would not trust America on missile defense either. 
That is a pretty strong statement. Why would I say that? Why would I 
not trust America on missile defense if I were a Russian?
  Because three times in the last 8 years under President Clinton we 
slapped Russia across the face on missile defense. Let me review the 
actual incidents one at a time.
  In 1992, the new President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, challenged 
former President George Bush to work together on missile defense. He 
said let us have our two countries cooperate. President Bush said, I 
agree. So our State Department began high level talks with the Russian 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Those talks were given a name, Ross-
Manedov talks, named after the two people leading the discussions.
  We had several meetings, quiet meetings, but very successful 
meetings. The two governments were looking at ways to cooperate back in 
1992 on missile defense.
  Things changed in 1993. A new President came in, a President who ran 
against missile defense. What was one of the first acts that President 
Clinton did? With no advance warnings to the Russian side, he abruptly 
canceled the Ross-Manedov talks. So we sent our first signal to Russia 
back in 1993, we do not want to work with you on missile defense. We 
will work alone.
  For the support of Congress, we kept one joint missile defense 
program operational with the Russians. It was the construction of two 
satellites, one controlled by Russia and one controlled by the U.S., to 
sense rocket launches around the world, so we could build confidence. 
The program is called RAMOS, Russian American program for space 
observations.
  In 1996, with no advance warning to the Russians or the Congress, the 
Clinton administration canceled the program. I got frantic calls in my 
office from my Russian friends. They said, Congressman Weldon, what is 
going on? You have told us you are trying to work with us. Your 
government just announced they are cancelling the funds for the RAMOS 
program?

  Democrats and Republicans in the Congress came together. Carl Levin 
in the Senate, myself in the House, joined by a number of other 
Members, said this cannot stand. We overturned the Clinton 
administration's decision to cancel the RAMOS program, and it is still 
being funded today.
  But, you know what Mr. Speaker? That was the second time that Russia 
got a signal from us. Our administration canceled the program. It was 
the Congress who restarted it.
  There was a third incident. In the late 1990s, with the ending of the 
two superpowers, the common thought in America was that the ABM Treaty, 
if it was kept in place, had to become more flexible to allow America 
to deal with new threats that were emerging.
  What did the Clinton administration do? It sent its negotiators to 
Geneva to negotiate with the Russians two new amendments to the ABM 
Treaty. At a time when almost everyone in America was saying let us 
relax the treaty so America can defend herself, what did the Clinton 
administration do? They negotiated with Russia two new tightening 
amendments that made the ABM Treaty tighter than it had been back in 
1972.
  Most of us in the Congress had no idea what the President was up to. 
We knew the amendments were dealing with multilateralizing the treaty, 
and the other dealt with something called demarcation.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I called the State Department in 1997 and I obtained 
permission to go to Geneva. I think I am the only Member of either body 
that went over there during the discussions. I sat down at the 
negotiating table, alongside of me was our chief negotiator, Stanley 
Rivalos. Across from me at the table was the chief Russian negotiator, 
General Koltunov. We met for 2\1/2\ hours.
  The first question I asked General Koltunov was, General, tell me, 
why do you want to multilateralize the ABM Treaty, meaning bring other 
nations in? It was only a treaty between two countries, the Soviet 
Union and the U.S. Why do you want to bring in Ukraine, Belarus and 
Kazakhstan? They do not have nuclear warheads nor long-range missiles. 
If you want to bring in former Soviet states, why did not you propose 
bringing them all in, all 15?
  He looked at me. He said, Congressman, you are asking that question 
of the wrong person. We did not propose multilateralizing the ABM 
Treaty. Your side did.
  I couldn't believe what I was hearing, Mr. Speaker. The Clinton 
administration went over to Geneva to negotiate a change in the treaty 
that brought in three former Soviet states to be equal signatories. 
Now, why would you do that, Mr. Speaker, unless, unless you wanted to 
make it tougher down the road to amend the treaty, because then you had 
to get four nations to agree as opposed to just Russia and the U.S.
  The second issue was demarcation. I could not understand how we 
differentiated between a theater missile defense system and national 
missile defense. If you are in Israel, our THAAD program would be 
national missile defense, because it protects your whole country. You 
are a small country. So I said to General Koltunov on the Russian side, 
tell me, how do you make the difference between theater and national? 
How do you determine the speed and range that makes one system theater 
and one system national?
  He said, Congressman, they are very delicate negotiations. I cannot 
explain it here. You have to go back and ask your scientists. So I came 
back home to America, not satisfied with the answers I got.

  About a year later, Mr. Speaker, I got my answer. I was reading a 
press account in a Tel Aviv newspaper that Russia was trying to sell 
Israel its brand new latest missile defense system called the ANTEI-
2500, A-N-T-E-I. They were also trying to sell the same system to 
Greece. I never heard of this system, and I know pretty much all of 
Russia's missile defense systems. I study them.
  So I called the CIA and asked them to send an analyst over. The 
analyst came over to my office and brought a color brochure with him, 
in English. He handed me the brochure when he walked in my office and 
said Congressman, this is the ANTEI-2500.
  I said, what is it? He said it is a brand new system that Russia is 
just now marketing. They are trying to sell it to Israel, Greece and 
other countries. He said I picked up this brochure at the air show in 
Abu Dhabi. The Russians were handing it out. It is in English. It is in 
color.

[[Page H3256]]

  So I looked through the brochure, I still have the brochure in my 
office, and I turned through it to see all the pictures. And on the 
back page were all the technical capabilities of this new Russian 
system, including speed, intercept range and capabilities.
  I looked at those figures and looked at the analyst and said, wait a 
minute. I have a hunch here that this system is right below the 
threshold of the demarcation that we got sucked into in Geneva, am I 
correct? He said yes, Congressman, you are correct. That is where the 
figure came from.
  Well, we were in Geneva negotiating a definition of what is a theater 
system. The Russians knew they would be marketing the system a year 
later, so they wanted that demarcation to allow them to market that 
system, but deny us from going any better than that system. So we 
agreed to it.
  President Clinton agreed to both of those changes in the ABM Treaty. 
So for the third time, we sent a signal to Russia. This third time the 
signal was we are going to tighten up the ABM Treaty. That is the 
policy of America.
  Do you know what, Mr. Speaker? In our country we do live under a 
Constitution, and our Constitution says that no President can in fact 
negotiate a treaty without the advice and consent of the Senate. Now, 
President Clinton knows our Constitution very well, and he knew that 
when he negotiated those two changes in 1997, he had to submit them to 
the Senate for their advice and consent.
  But, do you know what, Mr. Speaker? The President knew he could not 
get the votes to pass either one of them, even from his own party. So 
from 1997 until Bill Clinton left office, neither of those two changes 
to the ABM Treaty were submitted as required by our Constitution to the 
Senate. Yet the President convinced the Russians that that was our 
policy.
  So the Russians last year, when they were ratifying START II, a very 
important treaty, the Duma attached those two treaty changes to the 
START II treaty itself. They had nothing to do with START II, but the 
Russians added those two protocols on. The Clinton administration, 
figuring they would tie the hands of the Senate, because if they could 
not submit those two changes separately by attaching them to START II, 
which the Russians ratified, they would force the Senate into a corner 
and they would have to ratify them as a part of START II 
reratification. That is why last summer the Senate said it would not 
take up START II. So, for the third time, the Clinton administration 
sent the wrong signal to Russia.

                              {time}  2230

  That is why the Russians do not trust us, Mr. Speaker, because they 
got terribly mixed signals during the past 8 years. That is all 
changing now. President Bush has said we want to work with Russia. We 
want to work with Europe. We will do missile defense together.
  The Russians believe in missile defense. They have the SA-10, SA-12. 
They have the ANTEI-2500. They have the S-300, the S-400, S-500; and 
they have national missile defense.
  They have an ABM system. They have all of those systems, some of the 
best systems in the world. Is it wrong then for America to want to 
defend ourselves? Now, there is one additional problem and reason why 
the Russians do not trust us, Mr. Speaker, and this is going to be a 
pretty provocative statement. It is actually caused by the very arms 
control groups in this city who claim to be the advocates of peace.
  Do I have any proof to back that up? Let me give you an example, Mr. 
Speaker. In the midst of the national missile defense debate in 1999, 
this article ran in Time Magazine, about Star Wars, the new version of 
missile defense, a two-page spread. The story is supposed to be about 
missile defense, defending our people and defending Russia's people.
  Up here in the corner is this chart, which you cannot see, so I have 
had it blown up. What is the title of this chart, Mr. Speaker? 
``Destroying Russia. Arms control advocates map the Pentagon's top 
secret plan for waging war, 1,200 warheads hitting 80 targets, and they 
have the targets throughout Russia.'' Down at the bottom, ``Killing 
zones, the vast spread of radiation wipe out more than 20 million 
Russian people.''
  Mr. Speaker, one of my best friends from Moscow was in my office and 
brought me this magazine. He threw it on my table and he said, Curt, I 
know what you are doing with missile defense, and I support you, but 
this is what the Russian people think you want. They see this story on 
missile defense in Time magazine, which is printed all over Russia; and 
they see a picture of a map destroying our country and killing 20 
million people.
  Who produced this chart, Mr. Speaker? The Natural Resources Defense 
Council. So the fear in Russia was not caused by missile defense. It 
was caused by the hate-mongering people in those arms control groups 
that have scared the Russian people into believing somehow we want to 
wipe out 20 million of their citizens.
  And guess what, Mr. Speaker? They did it again. In this week's 
Newsweek magazine, there is another chart showing a nuclear hit in 
Russia. Again, it is attributed to Natural Resources Defense Council.
  This will be on every news stand in Russia and will be the talk of 
the Russian people; and they will say to themselves, this is what 
America really wants, because their arms control people are telling 
this to their people; they want to destroy Russia.
  They want to kill tens of millions of innocent Russian citizens. That 
is why Russians distrust us, Mr. Speaker. It is not because of what 
George Bush wants to do. It is not because of what I want to do.
  Tomorrow, I will lead discussions with Russia's leaders. We have 12 
of their top Duma deputies in town, the first deputy speaker; and we 
will have discussions all day. I have been to Russia 26 times, Mr. 
Speaker.
  I consider myself to be Russia's best friend in Congress, sometimes 
their toughest critic; but that is what good friends are for. This is 
not about backing Russia into a corner.
  This is not about starting an arms race. This is not about 
bankrupting America. This is about protecting the American people. Mr. 
Speaker, if I wanted to hurt Russians, I would not have worked for the 
past 5 years on this project with the Russian Duma, which is to provide 
Russia for the first time with the Western-style mortgage program so 
that Russians can have houses like our middle-class people have in this 
country.
  The program is called Houses for Our People. Almost every governor of 
every republic in Russia has given their stamp of approval for a 
program that we negotiated together to help Russian people buy homes.
  We do not want to be Russia's enemy, but we sent the wrong signals to 
Russia over the past 8 years. We had an administration whose foreign 
policy toward Russia was like a roller coaster.
  We backed them into a corner on the first NATO expansion. We went 
into Kosovo like wild people, trying to go in like cowboys from the 
Wild West, killing innocent Serbs instead of requiring Russia to help 
us.
  We denied the fact that their Russian leaders were stealing billions 
of dollars of money that was supposed to help the Russian people, and 
we sent the wrong signals on missile defense.
  All of that is changing now, Mr. Speaker, because we have a President 
who will treat the Russians with honesty and dignity. He has told the 
Russian leader face to face, eye to eye, we want to be your friend. We 
want to be your partner. We want to work with you economically. We want 
to help you with your environmental problems. We want to work with you 
on a mortgage program for your people. We want to help you grow your 
economy so that you become an aggressive trading partner with America.

  All of us in this body and the other body should rally behind our 
President, and we should denounce those arms control groups in this 
city who use the distasteful practice of trying to convince the Russian 
people that somehow we are their enemy.
  They are the warmonger, the people who put charts up who say that we 
somehow want to create a war that would wipe out 20 million Russians. 
They are the very warmongers, and we will not accept that. There is a 
place for arms control, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker, I am not against treaties, as long as they are enforced, 
and that means we have to have the accountability; and we have to have 
the

[[Page H3257]]

enabling capability to observe in both countries with candor whether or 
not we are adhering to treaties.
  If we use the three simple requirements that Ronald Reagan laid out 
in dealing with both Russia and China, strength, consistency and 
candor, we will not have a problem in this century. We want the same 
thing for the Russian people that President Putin wants; we want them 
to have a better life then they had. We want their kids to have better 
education. We want them to have homes for family. We want their Duma to 
become a strong part of governing their country.
  We want the Russian people to eventually realize the same kind of 
dreams that we realize in America, but we are not going to allow the 
American people to remain vulnerable. We are not going to deny the 
reality of what is happening in rogue and terrorist states.
  When Members of the other body, like the Senate Foreign Relations 
chairman, are disingenuous and say our real concern are weapons of mass 
destruction, we have to counter that, because we do not have a corner 
on that. All of us understand that threat, just as we do the threat 
from cyberterrorism and narcodrug trafficking, but the fact is we 
cannot ignore the threat of missile proliferation.
  We must work on arms control agreements. We must work on 
stabilization and building confidence and trust, and we must build 
limited systems that give us that protection that we do not now have. I 
am convinced, Mr. Speaker, that in the end, Russia and America will be 
prime partners together.
  We will work on technology together. The Russians have expertise that 
we do not have. Together we can protect our children and our children's 
children, and we can deny those rogue states the chance of harming 
Russians or Americans or others of our allies by working together.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join President Bush in this 
effort; and I applaud him for his meeting with President Putin, and I 
look forward to our meeting tomorrow with the leaders of the Russian 
Duma.

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