By offering these ideas to Moscow now, sources say, President Clinton hopes to jump-start formal negotiations after Russia’s March presidential election. The administration’s proposed ABM-treaty amendments are minimal, allowing only bare-bones defenses against North Korean missiles. Clinton, sources say, has decided to leave to his successor the problem of negotiating the more extensive defenses needed against Iran and Iraq. On START III, the administration is sticking to the 2,500 strategic-weapons cap Clinton and Boris Yeltsin agreed to in the mid-1990s. The Russians have said they want to lower the cap to 1,500. Washington may give on START III in exchange for Russian ABM concessions. “Putin didn’t throw [the proposals] off the table,” says one U.S. official. “How much of that is just his style, we’ll have to see.”
