U.S. Anticipates Missile Defense Deals in 2008

A high-level U.S. official said yesterday he believes Washington can finish negotiations on placing missile defense installations in Europe before President George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, March 3).

“The odds are extremely high that they will be successful, extremely high,” said acting Undersecretary of State Daniel Fried regarding talks with Poland and the Czech Republic.

“There are complicated negotiations under way but we are making good progress, both technically and politically,” he said at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The Bush administration wants to deploy 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic as a defense against threats from nations such as Iran.

The deal with Prague has been hung up slightly over environmental rules for the site, but Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said an agreement could be ready before a NATO summit in early April.

“We are quite well advanced” with the Czechs, said Assistant Secretary of State John Rood.  “There is only just one sentence that remains in the agreement to be negotiated.  My expectation is that in the very near term we will successfully complete those negotiations” (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, March 5).

However, Czech opposition lawmakers have received orders to vote against the deal, Reuters reported yesterday.

“The (radar) base simply is not necessary.  There is no threat from Iran and if it exists one day, then we modify our political approach,” said Jiri Paroubek, head of the leftist Social Democrat party, which has 71 members of the Czech parliament (Jan Korselt, Reuters/Yahoo!News, March 5).

Meanwhile, Poland has demanded U.S. air-defense systems and support for modernizing its military in exchange for housing the interceptors.  Warsaw indicated last week that the latest U.S. offer was not sufficient.

“There are still some substantial issues that remain to be done, but we are optimistic still in the United States that we can successfully conclude these negotiations in the near term,” Rood said (AFP, March 5).

Rood met today with his Polish counterpart for the sixth set of talks on the agreement, the Associated Press reported (Associated Press I, March 6).

Meanwhile, the head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency yesterday provided a briefing to NATO nations on the ongoing European missile shield efforts, AP reported.  Top officials from the Defense and State departments joined Lt. Gen. Henry Obering at the meeting in Brussels.

The U.S. system would be intended to provide defense to European nations against incoming missiles.  NATO is developing a system that would provide defense against short-range missiles and extend the reach of the European shield to cover Greece, Turkey and Romania (Associated Press II/Khaleej Times, March 5).

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