From: Yemane Natnael (yemane_natnael@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Aug 15 2008 - 12:20:06 EDT
Russia Lashes Out on Missile Deal
By THOM SHANKER and NICHOLAS KULISH
Published: August 15, 2008
WASHINGTON — The United States and Poland
reached a long-stalled deal on Thursday to place an American missile
defense base on Polish territory, in the strongest reaction so far to Russia’s military operation in Georgia.
Russia reacted angrily, saying that the move would worsen relations
with the United States that have already been strained severely in the
week since Russian troops entered separatist enclaves in Georgia, a
close American ally. At a news conference on Friday, a senior Russian
defense official, Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, suggested that Poland
was making itself a target by agreeing to host the anti-missile system.
Such an action “cannot go unpunished,” he said.
The deal
reflected growing alarm in a range of countries that had been part of
the Soviet sphere about a newly rich and powerful Russia’s intentionsin
its former cold war sphere of power. In fact, negotiations dragged on
for 18 months — but were completed only as old memories and new fears
surfaced in recent days.
Those fears were codified to some
degree in what Polish and American officials characterized as unusual
aspects of the final deal: that at least temporarily American soldiers
would staff air defense sites in Poland oriented toward Russia, and
that the United States would be obliged to defend Poland in case of an
attack with greater speed than required under NATO, of which Poland is a member.
Polish
officials said the agreement would strengthen the mutual commitment of
the United States to defend Poland, and vice versa. “Poland and the
Poles do not want to be in alliances in which assistance comes at some
point later — it is no good when assistance comes to dead people,” the
Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Polish television. “Poland
wants to be in alliances where assistance comes in the very first hours
of — knock on wood — any possible conflict.”
A sense of deepened
suspicions — and the more darkly drawn lines between countries in the
region — were also apparent in the emotional reaction from Russia. “It
is this kind of agreement, not the split between Russia and United
States over the problem of South Ossetia, that may have a greater
impact on the growth in tensions in Russian-American relations,”
Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the
Russian Parliament, told the Interfax news agency on Thursday in
Moscow.
South Ossetia is the pro-Russian enclave inside Georgia
where Russia sent troops last week, following a military crackdown by
the pro-Western government in Georgia. The missile defense deal
was announced by Polish officials and confirmed by the White House.
Under it, Poland would host an American base with 10 interceptors
designed to shoot down a limited number of ballistic missiles, in
theory launched by a future adversary such as Iran. A tracking radar
system would be based in the Czech Republic. The system is expected to
be in place by 2012.
In exchange for providing the base, Poland
would get what the two sides called “enhanced security cooperation,”
notably a top-of-the-line Patriot air defense system that can shoot
down shorter-range missiles or attacking fighters or bombers.A
senior Pentagon official described an unusual part of this quid pro
quo: an American Patriot battery would be moved from Germany to Poland,
where it would be operated by a crew of about 100 American military
personnel members. The expenses would be shared by both nations.
American troops would join the Polish military, at least temporarily,
at the front lines — facing east toward Russia.
Russia has long
opposed the deal, saying the United States was violating post-cold-war
agreements not to base its troops in former Soviet bloc states and
devising a Trojan Horse system designed to counter Russia’s nuclear
arsenal, not an attack by Iran or another adversary.
Stop-and-start
negotiations over the arrangement that was sealed Thursday had been
under way for almost two years, with the Polish government reluctant to
press the deal in the face of strong opposition — and retaliatory
threats — from Moscow.
For its part, Washington had balked at
some of Poland’s demands, in particular the sale of advanced air
defense systems that were unrelated to shooting down ballistic missiles.But
in a sign of the widening repercussions of the conflict in Georgia,
those concerns were cast aside, as the offensive by Russia’s military
across its borders was viewed around the world as a sign of Moscow’s
determination to reimpose its influence across the old Soviet bloc.
Polish
officials, in announcing the agreement, said it would be presented to
the National Legislature, although it remained unclear whether the
American base would require a vote of approval.
The other half of the American missile defense system in Europe would
be an advanced radar in the Czech Republic for tracking specific
targets and then precisely guiding an interceptor to destroy a warhead.
Likewise, that deal has been signed by the country’s leaders, and is
awaiting debate in the Czech Parliament.
At the White House, the press secretary, Dana M. Perino, confirmed
that senior officials had initialed the agreement. “In no way is the
president’s plan for missile defense aimed at Russia,” she said. “In
fact, it’s just not even logically possible for it to be aimed at
Russia, given how Russia could overwhelm it. The purpose of missile
defense is to protect our European allies from any rogue threats, such
as a missile from Iran.”
The Bush administration, in an attempt
to prove its sincerity and transparency, had invited Moscow to join as
a partner in a continentwide missile defense system, sharing
information and technology with NATO allies.
While Russian and
American experts have discussed cooperation, senior officials in Moscow
have kept up a nonstop stream of complaints about the system.
The
agreement also poses potential political problems for Democratic
critics of missile defense who would be fighting to cut financing for
the program in the face of the specific request from Poland and in
light of the Russian offensive into Georgia.
There is no such
ambivalence on Russia’s periphery, where Moscow’s attack signaled
danger, and offered logic for closer ties with Washington and NATO.
In
Poland, the war in Georgia has dominated the front pages of newspapers,
where it has been starkly characterized as Russian invaders attacking
Georgia. For Poles, Russia’s actions also come as a vindication of
Poland’s distrust of its former conqueror and was a warning about
issues like energy security, one of the primary areas in which a
resurgent Russia first began to exert itself.
“We are worried
that we are facing, under the strong arm of Russia, a situation where
some kind of understanding would be reached that Russia would be given
a free hand in the region,” said Eugeniusz Smolar, director of the
Center for International Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research
group in Warsaw.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/world/europe/16poland.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
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