UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly endorsed a resolution on Wednesday aimed at pressing the United States to abandon plans to build an antimissile defense.
The vote on the resolution, recommended last month by the assembly's disarmament and international security committee, was 80-4, with 68 abstentions.
Voting against the draft, together with the United States, were Albania, Israel and Micronesia. The members of the 15-nation European Union abstained, except for France and Ireland, which voted for the resolution.
It calls for continued efforts to strengthen and preserve the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the then Soviet Union, which limits missile defenses.
Washington wants to amend the treaty to permit the construction in the next five years of a limited antimissile defense, based in Alaska or North Dakota, as a shield against possible attacks by so-called "rogue states'' against U.S. territory or U.S. troops stationed abroad.
Russian and China have repeatedly warned that any changes to the ABM treaty would threaten other disarmament accords, undermine strategic stability and spark a new arms race.
The treaty is based on the theory that antimissile systems would only tempt the other side to build more missiles to overwhelm the defenses.
Committee passed resolution last month
The U.N. resolution, originally sponsored by Russia, China and Belarus, was approved by the assembly's disarmament committee on Nov. 5 by a 54-4 vote, with 73 abstentions.
It calls on the parties to the ABM treaty "to refrain from the deployment of antiballistic missile systems for the defense of the territory of their country and not to provide a base for such a defense.''
The treaty parties are also called on not to transfer to other states, or to deploy outside their national territory, anti-ballistic-missile systems or their components limited by the treaty.
Under the treaty, Russia has long had an aging ABM defense to protect only Moscow. But neither country has a national missile defense such as the one the United States wants to deploy on a limited scale that would not be sufficient to neutralize Russia's large nuclear force.
As an apparent warning to Washington, Russia early last month test-fired one of its short-range antimissile rockets for the first time in six years and later test-fired an old nuclear-capable tactical missile to show that its shelf-life had not expired.
The U.N. resolution calls for "renewed efforts by each of the states parties to preserve and strengthen'' the ABM treaty through full and strict compliance.
It considers that any measure undermining the purposes and provisions of the treaty "also undermines global strategic stability and world peace and the promotion of further strategic nuclear arms reductions.''
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