IF USA BANGS DOOR ON ABM TREATY, LEGAL CONSEQUENCES WILL NOT DEPEND ON RUSSIA, WARNS PUTIN








MOSCOW, March 6. /RIA Novosti/. Legal consequences will not depend on Russia if the USA quits the 1972 ABM treaty on an unilateral arrangement. "I am stressing the point, and I want all to realise it," President Vladimir Putin emphasised in an internet interview.


	The ABM treaty is basis for a number of other international security agreements. In fact, the entire international security system rests on it. If the treaty is torpedoed, the system will collapse to doom the entire international security network available for today, stressed the President.


	To exemplify his point, he mentioned Russia ratifying the START II to cut the number of its strategic missiles. But then, as the ratification law has it, the ratification is valid only in case of compliance with the ABM treaty--which means that if it collapses, the Russian pledge to comply with quantitative ABM defence limitations is automatically invalidated.


	Russia is willing to continue negotiations, and wants them eventually to specify the nature and extent of threats to the USA and other countries. They must join hands to see how to neutralise those threats without striking apprehensions into each other, said President Putin.


	To present ultimatums to anyone is the last thing Moscow intends to do. It wants to stay within the negotiation process, and hopes it will stay in it. The USA, as Russia's partner, shares those intentions, judging by the new Administration's response, which makes Russia optimistic, he remarked.


	President Putin does not think Russia will encounter more problems with the Bush Administration than with the Clinton. He hopes that common sense and logic will bring both sides to a "positive search for final results".