Excerpts from an interview at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary William J. Perry by editors and reporters of The Washington Times.
Mr. Perry: I thought I would start off with national missile defense, ballistic missile defense, since it's a topic treated prominently in your newspaper...
I start off by saying that I would have a slight modification of a recent headline in The Washington Times, which said, "Perry finds missile defense unnecessary." I would change that to say, "Perry finds missile defense necessary," with that slight modification in the headline....
There's no difference that I see between myself and the majority in Congress on the defense against Scud. There is only a difference of degree on what we should be doing on the next-generation defense system against the next-generation threat.
The most substantial difference is in the ... intercontinental ballistic missiles that could be fired against the United States and the national missile defense system that would defend against those....
The national missile defense system we have under development - first of all ... there are two different kinds of threats. There's the threat that's been with us for decades of the long-range missiles in the former Soviet Union, now Russia. And China also has long-range ballistic missiles. And for decades we have been dealing with those threats through deterrence, not through a missile defense system.
In addition to that, there's a possibility that what we call a rogue nation might get some small number of ICBMs and use them against us at some time in the future. And while this would be a considerably smaller threat than the number of missiles which Russia could launch, there also is a concern that they may not be deferrable.
So while that threat does not exist today, it could emerge sometime in the future, and therefore we have under way a development of a system to deal with that. On the present program, the program to the Congress now, this national missile defense system would have its development completed in about three years. And then if, at the end of that three-year period, we decided to build and deploy it, it would take another three years to build and deploy it.
Question: We had a story today that said that the Chinese were actively trying to obtain SS-18 technology from both Russia and the Ukraine, under the,guise of developing a space-launch program.... Are you aware of that effort, and has the U.S. government made any efforts to try to prevent that SS-18 technology from going to China?
Mr. Perry: We are aware that the Chinese have requested some components of SS-18 technology We think that's a very bad idea. And in its most straightforward manifestation, it is not just a bad idea; it is contrary both to the START treaty and the MTCR (Missile Technology Control Regime), and therefore we would vigorously oppose, and have vigorously opposed such transfers.
There is a related question as to whether SS-18 boosters could be used commercially to boost space vehicles into orbit, and there I guess our answer would be only if it's very tightly controlled, so you can have great confidence this technology is not being diverted to some other application....
But all of the other technology you think of the SS-18, I think we must be and are adamantly opposed to any such transfer and are being very direct with both the Russians and the Ukrainians on this issue.
Q: Could you explain that? You said we are being very direct. Have we actually communicated with them?
Mr. Perry: Yes, we have....
Q: Who has communicated this, and to whom has this communication been in Ukraine and Russia?
Mr. Perry: Yeah, I don't want to go any farther than I have gone, but I will assure you that there have been communications at high levels to both the Russian and the Ukrainian governments of our very specific concern on this - not just the general transfer question, but specifically the potential of an SS-18 technology transfer.
Q: And the Chinese? Have we said anything to them?
Mr. Perry: The discussion there was
more general, and I don't want to characterize that any further. It was a different
- the demarche to the Russians and
Ukraine was very specific on action they
might take....