Fairbanks (Alaska): The Pentagon is considering a plan to replace the nuclear warheads on some intercontinental ballistic missiles with conventional weapons for preemptive strikes against terrorists, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.
“The United States is looking into the possibility of taking a relatively small number of our ballistic missiles and taking a nuclear weapon off and putting a conventional weapon on,'' Rumsfeld told reporters on Sunday after a meeting with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov.
''If either of our countries or friends and allies were threatened at some number of years into the future with a weapon of mass destruction or a capability that was that lethal, I think any president, whether of Russia or the United States, would like to have available a conventional weapon that could attack that target swiftly and accurately and precisely and not feel that the only thing they had might be a nuclear weapon, which they would not want to use,” he said.
Rumsfeld also said that he hoped Russia would consider the idea too, but Ivanov said that Russia had concerns.
The Russian Defense Minister said that there might be different solutions for preemptive strike.
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