Global Security Newswire

Senior U.S. Defense Department officials met with European officials in Rome earlier this month in an effort to persuade European countries to increase their missile defense funding, Defense News reported yesterday (see GSN, July 15).

During the meeting, Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, said European countries had to develop a more consistent plan for missile defense spending. 

“Up until last year, we had an ABM Treaty preventing the kind of work we are trying to do now,” Kadish said, referring to the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty from which the United States withdrew last year (see GSN, June 13, 2002). “Then we had a debate about whether to do it ourselves. I think we have done very well in a year,” he said.

To accelerate cooperation, Kadish called on European countries to enter into bilateral cooperation agreements with the United States. He cited as an example a U.S.-British agreement to allow the United States to improve a missile-tracking radar based in the United Kingdom (see GSN, Feb. 6).

European officials, however, have balked at further cooperation, saying the United States has yet to develop a clear plan for the development of a missile defense system, according to Defense Week.

“Democratically elected governments need to explain to their people where the money is going,” a European official said (Kington/Ratnam, Defense Week, Oct. 13).

Meanwhile, Romania has denied reports that it was holding talks with the United States over the deployment of U.S. missile defense systems there, according to Agence-France Presse (see GSN, Oct. 10).

The German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported last week that the United States was seeking to deploy missile defense system in Eastern Europe to prevent a possible Iranian attack. The German newspaper quoted a U.S. State Department official as saying that Romania and Bulgaria could be “the first choices” for such deployment.

Senior Romanian officials, however, have denied that any such talks with the United States have occurred, AFP reported.

“There haven’t been such discussions, negotiations or requests from Washington,” Romanian Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana said (Agence France-Presse/IranMania.com, Oct. 10).