U.S. missile defence plans aimed at Russia, top military official says

Vladimir Isachenkov The Associated Press
[link to www.thestar.com]

MOSCOW-U.S. missile defence plans are a threat to Russian national security and have slowed down progress on a new arms control treaty with Washington, Russia’s top military officer said Tuesday.

Gen. Nikolai Makarov said that a revised U.S. plan to place missiles in Europe undermines Russia’s national defence, rejecting Obama administration promises that the plan is not directed at his country.

“We view it very negatively, because it could weaken our missile forces,” Makarov, the chief of the Russian military’s General Staff, said in televised remarks.

Makarov’s comments are the strongest yet on the revamped U.S. missile effort and signal potential new obstacles to an agreement on a new nuclear arms reduction treaty to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that expired Dec. 5.

The U.S. has insisted that the missile defence plans should be separate from talks to forge a new agreement on cutting the two nations’ nuclear arsenals.

Moscow and Washington hoped that they would sign a new treaty by the end of December, but talks have dragged on.

President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap Bush administration plans for missile defence sites designed to shoot down long-range missiles from rogue states such as Iran drew praise from the Kremlin, which had fiercely opposed the earlier plan as a threat.

Experts have said the new plan is less threatening to Russia because it would not initially involve interceptors capable of shooting down Russia’s intercontinental ballistic missiles.

In December, Moscow urged Washington to share detailed data about the reconfigured sea- and land-based systems to replace the old plans.

Russian officials at first reacted calmly to U.S. plans to deploy Patriot missile systems in Poland, but have grown increasingly critical in recent weeks.

Romania last week approved a proposal to place anti-ballistic missile interceptors in the country as part of the revamped American missile shield.

Asked Tuesday about the plans in Romania and Poland, Makarov called the U.S. missile defence plans a threat.

“The development of missile defence is aimed against the Russian Federation,” he said.

Romania’s Foreign Ministry maintained in a document that the proposed system is “strictly defensive ... it just defends against any attack.”

No radar would be placed in the country for the missile-defence system and no interceptors would be put on ships in the Black Sea, the ministry said. The ministry also said that Russia could participate in the system if it chose to do so.

The ministry said the shield would include four phases. First, radar and Standard Missile-3 ballistic missiles would be placed on ships in southeastern Europe, along with a radar base, by 2011.

The second phase, by 2015, would include placing ground interceptors and a new radar base in southeastern Europe. The third phase would cover the whole of Europe by placing ground interceptors in northern Europe and developing new SM-3s to be placed on the ground and on ships, by 2018.

In the fourth phase, by 2020, the system would include protection against intercontinental ballistic missiles, the ministry said.

Makarov said that the planned U.S. missile shield must be part of U.S.-Russian talks on a successor to START. He said that the U.S. refusal to include missile defence in the talks had hampered progress.

“The treaty on strategic offensive weapons we are currently working on must take into account the link between defensive and offensive strategic weapons,” Makarov said. “This link is very close, they are absolutely interdependent. It would be wrong not to take the missile defence into account.”

Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned the U.S. last month that it must share informationabout its missile defence plans if it wants Russia to provide data on its new weapons.