"Sorry boss I couldn't get the Ruskies to play ball with us. Rumsfeld wins, you better give Putin a call and tell him the ABM Treaty is ancient history."

Two decades ago, President Reagan dubbed the multiple warhead MX missiles 'peacekeepers' and put scientists to work on a 'defensive shield' to protect his 'fellow Americans' which would make nuclear weapons 'obsolete'.

In fact, the world witnessed a bigger military budget including Trident, increased international tension and talk about fighting a 'limited nuclear war'.

Nearly 20 years on, we have another US President with a penchant for barbecues on the ranch and riding the range with weird visions of advanced military hardware being deployed to enhance security "for the good of peace" and loose talk about small, 'usable' nuclear weapons.

"CND would like to remind President Bush that, in a democracy, the people's representatives ratify treaties and only they should have the authority to abrogate them,"  said CND Chair Carol Naughton.

Moreover, governments are supposed to instruct their military to abide by international agreements their predecessors signed. In May 2000 at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Conference, the nations of the world agreed to move towards the total elimination of nuclear arsenals with measures such as preserving the ABM Treaty, ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the continued reduction in warhead numbers under the START II Treaty, leading to START III.

"Given President Bush's record on putting the US 'national interest' before international treaties that his predecessors' signed, it may be only a matter of time before the NPT becomes 'ancient history' too," concluded Carol Naughton.