Czech Parliament Not to Issue Missile Defense Resolution in 2007, Defense Official Says

A senior Czech defense official said lawmakers would not issue a resolution this year regarding the U.S. plan to deploy a missile defense radar in the country, ITAR-Tass reported Tuesday (see GSN, Aug. 21).

“We have not made a final decision so far, and we shall not make it before the talks are over and before all aspects of the problem are evaluated.  Anyway, the decision will not be made before the end of the current year,” First Deputy Defense Minister Martin Bartak said following talks with Russian military chief of staff Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky.

“We shall continue our discussions, and we shall follow most closely the talks between Russia and the United States,” he said (ITAR-Tass, Aug. 21).

U.S. and Russian experts continue to study plans offered by the Russian leadership as an alternative to deploying the Czech radar and 10 missile interceptors in Poland, the Xinhua News Agency reported today. 

President Vladimir Putin and other top Russian officials have strenuously objected to the U.S. plan, and have offered instead to share data from existing radars in Azerbaijan and Russia and have urged a delay to interceptor deployment.  U.S. officials say the Russian offerings could augment but not supplant their program, which they say is being developed to counter the threat of Iranian missiles.

“The essence of these offers is cooperation of all interested states in assessing a missile threat in the world and collective monitoring of [the] strategic situation in missile dangerous regions with the use of information from radar stations covering these regions, in particular, the radar station in Galaba (Azerbaijan),” said Russian Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Boris Malakhov.

“A fundamental condition for the implementation of Russian proposals is abandonment of the U.S. plan to deploy a missile defense base in Europe and the deployment of strike antimissile elements in space,” he added, according to ITAR-Tass.

U.S. and Azeri officials are expected to discuss the radar next month.  The top U.S. and Russian defense and foreign affairs officials are likely to consider the matter during their meeting in October, Xinhua reported (Xinhua News Agency/China Daily, Aug. 24).

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