"AirRaid" <airraid1400@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:1177809932.327083.323020@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Russia will counter U.S. missile ****eld: Putin
> Fri Apr 27, 2007 11:29 AM ET
>
> By Oleg Shchedrov
>
> MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Friday renewed
> criticism of U.S. plans to deploy a missile ****eld in Eastern Europe,
> saying Russia would take "appropriate measures" to counter the system.
>
> Putin told Czech President Vaclav Klaus at a Kremlin meeting that the
> proposed missile ****eld would be used to track Russian military
> activities.
>
> "These systems will monitor Russian territory as far as the Ural
> mountains if we don't come out with a response," Putin told Klaus.
> "And we will indeed do this. Anyone would."
>
> "We will not get hysterical about this. We will just take appropriate
> measures," he said, without elaborating.
>
> Russia views the U.S. plan to base 10 missile interceptors in Poland
> and radar in the Czech Republic from 2012 as a major threat to its
> national security.
>
> Wa****ngton says the system is needed to defend Europe and U.S. forces
> there against what it calls "rogue states" such as Iran and North
> Korea. But top Russian politicians say the U.S. plan could disrupt
> European stability and fuel a new Cold War-style arms race.
>
> Moscow's top brass say the missile ****eld does not pose any immediate
> military threat for Russia, but warn that Russia will have to develop
> new anti-missile technology to counter it.
>
> Speaking at a news conference with Klaus, Putin compared the missile
> ****eld plan with the deployment of U.S. Per****ng-2 missiles in Western
> Europe in the early 1980s, which triggered a bitter diplomatic crisis
> in the final years of the Cold War.
>
> The dispute over missile defense has strained already stormy relations
> between Moscow and Wa****ngton, with some officials talking of a new
> Cold War.
>
> In a sign of growing tensions, Putin announced in a speech on Thursday
> that Russia was freezing its commitments under the Conventional Forces
> in Europe treaty, a deal hammered out at the end of the Cold War to
> maintain the regional strategic balance.
>
> "For the first time elements of the U.S. strategic nuclear system are
> appearing on the European continent," Putin said on Friday. "This
> element dramatically changes the security situation in Europe.
>
> "We do not understand ... what is happening in Europe now that
> requires such aggressive actions," Putin said. "We see no arguments
> for deploying the missile ****eld in Europe."
Logically, Putin has no reason to object to a missile ****eld unless
targeting of Europe and the US by nuclear weapons is already part of their
strategic operational plan. Even then, ten interceptors are hardly enough
to blunt a full attack on Europe by the new generation of mobile ICBMs
(the
Topaz-Ms).
This furor from the Kremlin makes little or no sense - unless Putin is
indeed pursuing an aggressive course against the West.
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