By Peter Graff

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A top Russian general said in an interview published on Wednesday that U.S. plans to build a missile defence system would wreck the foundations of three decades of arms control accords.

In an interview with the military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov said Moscow firmly opposed changes to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Washington wants altered to let it build a new missile defence.

His remarks were published on the eve of a visit by the U.S. point man on Russia policy, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, amid an intensifying arms control row.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said she was "troubled" by reports another Russian general had threatened that Moscow would deploy more nuclear warheads if the United States went ahead with its defence plans.

The ABM treaty bans systems designed to shoot enemy missiles out of the sky, under the logic that allowing such defences would have tempted Cold War-era foes to stockpile ever larger arsenals of nuclear missiles to pierce the enemy's umbrella.

The United States wants the treaty modified to allow it to build a limited defence, to protect itself and its allies from a possible missile launch by what it calls "rogue" states, like North Korea and Iran.

Some U.S. hawks, including the Senate's Republican foreign affairs committee chief, want to see the ABM treaty scrapped altogether as an outdated Cold War relic.

But Ivashov, the military's foreign affairs chief and a senior figure in arms control talks, said Russia would not budge from its opposition to loosening the treaty.

RUSSIA SAYS U.S. VIOLATES PRINCIPLE OF ARMS CONTROL

He said the landmark START treaties of the 1980s and 1990s, which led to thousands of nuclear missiles being scrapped, were based on the balance of power set out in the ABM treaty.

"The attempt of the United States to protect its territory violates the very principle of the accords," he said.

"The Russian side's basic premise is the need to preserve the START process of limitations, retaining and reinforcing its foundation: the ABM treaty of 1972."

Arms control experts say U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration will probably spare itself a confrontation by deferring a final decision to deploy the new defence system until after Clinton's successor takes office in 2001.

But Ivashov said Russia objected to U.S. stalling.

"The scheme of violations for the United States is already practically standardised," he said.

"First they dream up the threat, take the decisions and begin financing (the defence system). Then they announce that the decision is somehow not final and offer to hold talks on 'changes' to the treaty. Then they wring their hands if their partner does not agree."