Clinton plea as missile plan splits Nato allies
By Christopher Lockwood, Diplomatic Editor, in Vienna and Marcus Warren in Moscow

PRESIDENT CLINTON yesterday issued a final plea for understanding of his plans for a National Missile Defence system at the end of a farewell European tour which has only highlighted misgivings about the project among his allies.

 Addressing deputies in the Russian parliament, probably the system's most implacable opponents, he said differences over the scheme were mainly technical and would soon be overcome. Plans to erect a shield to protect America from surprise missile strikes by "rogue states" would not weaken a power such as Russia, he told the Duma.

 His plea came after a week in Europe in which he has been left in little doubt that the plan is becoming Nato's most divisive problem. It has pitted Washington not only against Russia but against one of its most solid Nato allies, the Germans. The French are even more strongly opposed.

 Again, Britain finds itself caught in the middle, between its loyalty to the United States and a desire for solidarity with the rest of the European Union. The row has the potential to become as highly charged as the argument over the deployment of Euro missiles in the Seventies or cruise in the Eighties.

 Chancellor Gerhard Schröder criticised the NMD plans twice during Mr Clinton's two-day visit to Germany. Its geography and role as a former battleground of the Cold War mean it watches American defence policy with particular interest and studies how it might affect attitudes in Moscow.

 The German leader gave warning that America's defensive shield plan could alarm Moscow and trigger an arms race. He was also concerned that it could damage the spirit of co-operation between members of Nato. France and even Britain have been badly unnerved by an American offer, designed to sweeten the Russians, to share its anti-missile technology.

 If that happens, the French and British independent nuclear capabilities might become redundant against any Russian threat. This does not overly concern the British, who are locked into the American nuclear establishment. But it worries France, which prizes its force de frappe as a symbol of its independence from the American yoke.

 America's obsession with NMD goes back to the Eighties and Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative, or Star Wars. That plan never materialised because the technology could not be made to work. Since then the technology has become less ambitious but more effective, replacing dreams of laser beam weapons with more conventional anti-missile missiles, and the perceived threat has become greater.

 America fears being held to ransom by a "rogue state" so deranged or ideologically driven that it cannot be deterred by the threat of massive retaliation. Last year, a congressional report concluded that North Korea could be capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a missile able to reach America's shores within the next three or four years, much sooner than anyone had thought.

 The administration has come under intense pressure to deploy an NMD system, just as it is becoming technically feasible to do so. But there is a problem. Any NMD system is banned under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, designed to limit the arms race that would have ensued if Russia or America concluded that the only way to neutralise such a system would be to overwhelm it with a first-strike capability of tens of thousands of weapons.

 But America argues that things have changed since then. What it proposes is an extremely limited system, one that could only take out an incoming strike of perhaps 30 missiles, not the hundreds or thousands that Russia has available. Russia retorts that once the technology was established it would be relatively easy for America to break out of its commitments and rapidly build a much larger system.