Posted on 04/08/2008 12:49:51 PM PDT by LibWhacker
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian concerns over Washington's plan for a missile shield in Europe will only be eased if Russian officers have permanent access to the shield facilities, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday.
Russia says the planned shield is a threat to its own security and the row over the issue has helped to drive diplomatic relations with the United States to their lowest point since the Cold War.
Moscow has, however, agreed to consider a set of confidence-building measures proposed by Washington to allay Moscow's concerns.
"In all these many proposals we are interested only in two things: the permanent presence of our officers and reliable technological means of monitoring (activity at the sites)," Lavrov said in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio station.
"For us it is important that we should see second-by-second where that radar is looking, and what is happening at the ... base in the Czech Republic."
STICKING POINT
He said this demand was a sticking point in negotiations with Washington over the shield.
"In the proposals which we have received (from U.S. negotiators) ... there is no mention of a permanent presence, it says that officers can be posted to the Russian embassies in Poland and the Czech Republic and work at these sites on the basis of reciprocity," Lavrov said.
He said without permanent access to the sites, "this whole scheme of providing these measures for improving confidence is rendered worthless."
Asked to respond to Lavrov's comments, Tomas Pojar, the Czech Republic's deputy foreign minister, said: "A permanent presence is not something we would be considering."
"If Russians really care about transparency, it could be secured by a combination of several methods ... We offered liaison officers with access to the base," Pojar told Reuters.
The United States plans to deploy a radar in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland.
Washington says the missile shield in Europe is needed to protect from missile strikes by what it calls "rogue states," specifically Iran.
Moscow says it believes the radar will be used to monitor its territory and has called the U.S. plan a threat to the fragile balance of forces in Europe.
An informal summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush on Sunday failed to bridge the main differences on the shield.
But Putin said after the meeting he felt Washington had heard Moscow's concerns and expressed hope that adequate confidence-building measures would help allay them.
(Additional reporting by Jan Lopatka in Prague; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Peter Millership)
While we are at it we should demand control over their Bomber Wings so that we are comfortable with their flyovers of our Carriers and Alaska.
The Czechs and Poles have already said, “NO WAY!”
All your base are belong to us!
Why not give them the “on/off” switch too?
They are read on to the plan. They know from the basic orientation of radars, positioning of missiles, basic capabilities of missiles, scale of operation etc. that this system is not intended to shield from their missiles, but threats posed from the Middle East, North Africa potentially, and N. Korea. These as other demands serve ulterior motives, intel collection, built in ability to sabotage things, etc. No way-
Hehehehe... Thank you, Laz (and Johnny!)... My sentiments exactly.
Nice!
We already have satellites that do that.
Satellites have windows of coverage and, depending on the sensors aboard, can be foiled by weather or by deliberate obscuration of activities.
The radar would, in fact, see everything within its range fan and it would see it 24/7/365 regardless of weather conditions. The notional range fan would cover Ukraine, Belarus, the southern portion of European Russia (Volgograd south) a significant portion of the Black Sea, eastern Turkey, quite a bit of Iraq and the Caspian Sea, and, of course, all of Iran. The Russians have a lot of military installations and do quite a bit of their R&D in these regions, so their concerns are not entirely unreasonable.
But, we’re just looking for *rogue* missiles, Right?
Our Satellites have inferred technology.
Permanent access wouldn’t be a problem. After all, they were offered the technology years ago.
One might infer that.
“...if Russian officers have permanent access to the shield facilities...”
Until right in the middle of some crisis a backpack nuke goes off at one or more of the facilities...
What will they think of next?
Yes, the missile defense system really is limited to "rogue" missiles only.
It has been long known that an attack on the US by a country like the former Soviet Union would involve many hundreds of missiles and thousands of warheads. Any missile defense system designed using current or near term technology would have to be highly autonomous to deal with such a massive attack. In fact, it would probably have to be so autonomous that the likelihood being accidentally initiated would be very high. In short, it would pose a danger to nearly everything in low earth orbit including space craft, the ISS, satellites and even itself. In addition, developing, building, launching, and maintaining such a system would be far more complicated and expensive than the one we have built (and it has been plenty expensive as it is).
The system that the United States has developed and is proposing for deployment in the Czech Republic and Poland is meant to provide a limited number of interceptors to deal with a limited attack coming from a predictable direction. Period.
As I said in the original post, the radar is the problem because, to do it's job, it must be on all the time. And it will see everything and have to evaluate everything that it sees within its range fan. It must evaluate the information because a determination must be made as to the threat posed by every detection it makes. Obviously, this will be a window into activities in the region and that information will have intelligence value to the US and NATO.
The Russians, rightly, IMO, have got a problem with that.
Given the high probability that Iran is pursuing a nuclear missile capability, the US and NATO have three choices:
1. Do nothing and let Europe fall under the shadow of the Iranian nuclear threat. (At least until they develop their own missile defense system...er, well, maybe they would.)
2. Let Russia extend its supposed ABM-capable protective umbrella westward over Europe. (This would undermine NATO by making its fundamental security dependent on a autocratic state that alternatively blows hot and cold toward its European neighbors to the west.)
3. Deploy an available limited missile defense against the threat on the eastern margin of NATO where it can see farthest toward Iran and where NATO treaty obligations and basic state sovereignty act to shield it somewhat from Russian meddling at an inopportune time.
The fact is that many of the member states of NATO do not support many US policies and operations (including Iraq and Iran). They also have Russia as a neighbor and a major supplier of petroleum. This makes their unanimous vote for the deployment of the missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic (taken at the NATO head-of-state meeting late last month) a significant endorsement and says a lot about the seriousness of the Iranian situation.
Damn, I must be spellcheck codependent.
4. Eliminate the Iranian (Hezzie, Hamas, etc.) threat now.
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