http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/11/20041117-8.htmlQ I'm going to shift gears. President Putin has spoken to the Russian military leadership and said that Russia will be testing new nuclear missile systems which, he said, "will be the systems of the kind that other nuclear powers do not and will not have in the near future." What is the administration's assessment of what he's talking about? And isn't that a rather threatening thing to say?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think that our view is that this is not something that we look at as new. We are very well aware of their longstanding modernization efforts for their military. I might point out that we have a very good relationship with Russia. The President and President Putin have worked very closely together to establish that relationship. And they have worked together to move beyond some of the issues of the past and develop an agreement to significantly reduce our nuclear arsenals. And that's, I think, what is most important. But I think -- what I took from these comments, it is something that they have talked about before, and that's modernization of their military. We are allies now in the global war on terrorism.
Q So modernization of the nuclear component of the military is okay with this President?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, like I said, that it's something that -- we don't view it as something that is new. It's something that we are well aware of, that they were working on some modernization efforts for their military.
Q And it seems that one of the points of the modernization effort is to evade missile defense systems, that that's one of the things that these new missiles will be able to do. The President is okay with that? He doesn't --
MR. McCLELLAN: We have a very different relationship than we did during the Cold War. And we are working together to significantly reduce our nuclear arsenals. There is -- we both recognize the need to no longer have that size of a nuclear arsenal, and that's what we're working together on to reduce.
Q Can I ask a more general question, then? You said a couple of times that there's a new relationship and a good relationship with the Russian Federation and that President Bush specifically has a good relationship with President Putin. What's it getting the United States if Putin is crushing the free media, if he's not building down nuclear arsenals, but building them up, and if he's opposing the United States
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, no, he's reducing nuclear arsenals. That's what we agreed to do. But let me point out to you that the fact that we do have a good relationship enables us to speak very directly to our Russian friends about those issues. And the President has spoken directly to them about areas when we have concerns, one of which you mentioned right at the top there.
Q But this is not an area of concern?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, like I said, I checked here, and it was something that was not viewed as new to us.
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