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CNN Live At Daybreak

Bush Looking Forward to Signing Landmark Nuclear Treaty With Russia Next Week

Aired May 14, 2002 - 05:09   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: President Bush says he is looking forward to signing a landmark nuclear treaty with Russia next week. The agreement will cut each nation's warhead stockpile by some 65 percent.

As CNN's Bill Schneider reports, Washington and Moscow have come a long way.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union was the principal battlefield of the cold war. It was based on the principle of mutually assured destruction, you destroy us, we'll destroy you, kaboom, the end of the world. Arms control agreements like the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 and the START treaties that reduced strategic arsenals were events of great political as well as strategic importance.

PRES. JOHN F. KENNEDY: Negotiations were concluded in Moscow on a treaty to ban all nuclear tests.

SCHNEIDER: That was then. This is now. Now, with the end of the cold war, the U.S. and Russia have a new relationship.

VLADIMIR PUTIN, PRESIDENT, RUSSIA: Russia and the United States are not enemies. They do not threaten each other.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul.

SCHNEIDER: You don't run an arms race against the country that no longer poses a threat. September 11 pulled the U.S. and the Russians even closer together. The old adversaries from the cold war found themselves on the same side in the war against terrorism.

BUSH: As the events of September the 11th made all too clear, the greatest threats to both our countries come not from each other or other big powers in the world, but from terrorists who strike without warning or rogue states who seek weapons of mass destruction.

SCHNEIDER: A fact that became more apparent in the last few days as Russia found itself the target of a terrorist attack and a former U.S. president found himself in Cuba. Today, President Bush declared the arms race over.

BUSH: This treaty will liquidate the legacy of the cold war.

SCHNEIDER: But the world has hardly paused to notice because we now believe that the threat to the world no longer looks like this, it looks like this.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: A report from CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider.

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