MOSCOW -- (Reuters) President Boris Yeltsin announced on Monday he wanted parliament to ratify a nuclear test ban treaty as a priority, but it seems unlikely deputies will feel the same urgency while ties with the United States are strained.

The U.S. Senate dealt President Bill Clinton an embarrassing blow last month by rejecting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, drawing widespread international condemnation.

Yeltsin, seeking to capitalize on Washington's discomfort and deflect criticism of Russia's military campaign in Chechnya, said last week at the Istanbul summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe he had sent the treaty to the State Duma (lower house of parliament) to be ratified.

"The president of Russia has proposed that the question of ratifying the treaty be made a priority," the Kremlin said. "The treaty, in Boris Yeltsin's view, meets Russia's interests."

In theory, the Duma can review and ratify treaties within weeks. But such a weighty accord would need to be studied by several parliamentary committees just as deputies prepare for a December 19 election to the lower chamber. The upper house would also need to place its stamp on the document.

"I'm absolutely convinced this document has no chance whatsoever of being ratified in the present Duma," said Vladimir Ryzhkov, parliamentary head of the Our Home is Russia party. "It's to do with the geo-political situation in the world. The Americans are behaving like a bull in a china shop."

He said apart from failing to ratify the test ban accord and putting pressure on Moscow because of Chechnya, Washington wanted to violate another pact, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, to be able to deploy a national missile defense system.

"As long as the United States sticks to its clearly unfriendly policy toward Russia, no Duma is ever going to ratify that (test ban) treaty," Ryzhkov told Reuters.

The Kremlin statement said the treaty, which Moscow signed in 1996, would not damage Russia's defenses or security.

"If these national interests are placed under threat, the Russian Federation can use its right to leave the treaty," the Kremlin said.

Washington wants to renegotiate the ABM treaty to allow it to deploy a Star Wars-style national missile defense system to guard against so-called rogue states.

MIXED MESSAGE ON POSSIBLE COMPROMISE

Moscow believes the ABM treaty is the cornerstone of many other arms accords and is against any changes in it.

The head of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces, Colonel-General Vladimir Yakovlev, gave an intriguing hint of compromise last Friday when he said the United States and Russia should set up a commission to examine the rogue threat.

"If this commission works properly we could speak in more detail about the need to create national anti-missile systems," he told ORT television. He was speaking after the OSCE summit at which Clinton and Yeltsin discussed arms control.

The chief of the Russian General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, stuck to a tougher line in the latest edition of the military weekly Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye. He said the U.S. plan had Russia and China in mind rather than rogues.

He said nuclear missile reductions could be suspended or halted altogether if the ABM pact was violated. The newspaper also said Russia aimed to upgrade missile testing sites to allow Moscow to test weapons capable of penetrating a defense shield.

Home Page