Global Security Newswire

The United States' expanding missile defense activities might lead China to boost its nuclear arsenal, a former senior Russian military official said yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 23).

"At present, China has a very limited nuclear potential, but my recent contacts with Chinese military representatives indicate that if the United States deploys a global missile defense system, in particular in the Far East, China will build up its offensive capability," said former Russian Defense Ministry deputy chief Lt. Gen. Yevgeny Buzhinsky in a RIA Novosti report.

Buzhinsky did not specify how possible worldwide missile defenses could be neutralized by strategic weapons or why a missile shield would jeopardize China.

Russia has raised its own objections to U.S. plans for a European missile shield intended to counter potential medium- and short-range missiles fired from Iran (RIA Novosti, Feb. 24).

Meanwhile, Beijing today again criticized a recent U.S. decision to sell more than $6 billion worth of weaponry to Taiwan and reaffirmed its decision to halt high-level meetings between the two economic superpowers' militaries, the Associated Press reported (see GSN , Feb. 2).

Washington must "speak and act cautiously" so as to not cause further harm to U.S.-China relations or to ties between Beijing and Taipei, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Huang Xueping said in a Xinhua News Agency report.

"The U.S. side bears full responsibility for the current difficulties in [military] exchanges between the Chinese and U.S. militaries," he said.

The arms sale is set to include more than 100 advanced Patriot missile interceptors. A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report released this week found that Taiwan's air defenses would be insufficient to ward off a Chinese attack.

Beijing opposes all U.S. weapons deals to Taiwan, an autonomous island state that China claims as its territory.

The Chinese government has also warned, for the first time, that it might levy sanctions on U.S. aerospace firms involved in the weapons sale.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang today reiterated Beijing's assertion that weapons deals with Taipei hurt China's security interests. He called on Washington to rectify its actions.

"The people who tied the know should untie the knot," he said (Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press/Washington Post, Feb. 25).