The prospect of a medium-range weapons treaty has another alluring quality for the Soviet side.
But the Kremlin not only refused to drop its opposition to the plan, it also threatened to pull out of a conventional weapons treaty.
Democrats oppose the system because, they say, it is based on antiquated technology and would undermine international weapons treaties.
The effect of the three instruments combined-was such that Derec wondered momentarily if the robot hadn't come up with a violation of an interplanetary weapons treaty.
But the biological weapons treaty does not contain a means of verifying compliance.
On Tuesday, President Bush arrives to seal the strategic nuclear weapons treaty as the latest success in the Soviet leader's disarmament compromises.
While arms control can be a highly technical enterprise, the logic of the Bush administration's new approach to nuclear weapons treaties is fairly simple.
His advisers first held out the meeting as a glittering prize for Russia should it finally ratify the Start 2 nuclear weapons treaty.
More important than the limited disarmament embodied in the medium-range weapons treaty, the summit made the superpower rivalry a bit more predictable.
His work also confirmed Western suspicions that Moscow was cheating on the 1975 biological weapons treaty, officials and experts said.