Free Republic

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- A day after his country tested a long-range missile, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he is seeking information on U.S. defense plans. Putin, speaking Tuesday in Vladivostok in eastern Russia, said U.S. plans for defensive shields forces Moscow to develop additional offensive weapons to keep a "balance." He said if the United States had a strategic edge it may become more "aggressive." The United States and Russia are in negotiations to find a successor for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991. That agreement expired Dec. 5.

The US should consider making concessions to Russia on the placement of a missile-defense shield in Europe, in order to get Moscow to back "crippling" concessions against Iran if the time comes, a leading US congressman said Thursday. Howard Berman, the powerful Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an interview that one reason for a limited dialogue with the Iranians to get them to suspend uranium enrichment would be to encourage other countries to "buy into crippling" sanctions if Teheran failed to do so. Berman said the US-Iran talks should be of a set duration, somewhere...

THE timing of a US-Poland missile defence deal announced this week amid the crisis in Georgia indicates the system is aimed at Russia, Interfax news agency quoted a foreign ministry source as saying. "In reality this project has no relation to the Iranian missile threat but is aimed against Russia," Interfax quoted the senior Russian ministry source, who it did not identify, as saying. Warsaw and Washington signed a preliminary deal yesterday on basing part of a US missile shield in Poland, in the face of Moscow's vehement opposition and mounting East-West tensions over Georgia. US and Polish negotiators inked...