Tiki Tam Tam
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One wonders why this should be offered at this belated stage, when a firm stand had been taken earlier.
Such procrastination and vacillation does not indicate political will and that can have serious repercussion to the US projection as the only superpower.
Such procrastination and vacillation does not indicate political will and that can have serious repercussion to the US projection as the only superpower.
US offers Putin deal over missile shield
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington and James Blitz and Stephen Fidler in Brussels
Published: October 17 2007 20:58 | Last updated: October 18 2007 02:31
The US has told Russia it would be willing to delay switching on a missile def*ence system in Europe until both sides agree there was a threat from Iran, according to US officials.
Robert Gates, US defence secretary, and Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, made the offer to Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, in an attempt to allay Russian concerns about the Pentagons plan to place 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic.
A senior US defence official said Washington would continue negotiating with Poland and the Czech Republic towards building the missile defence installations. But he said the US was willing to leave the system switched off until the US and Russia had jointly validated that Iranian ballistic missiles posed a threat.
It is our intention to proceed with the construction of missile defence in Europe, said Geoff Morrell, Pentagon spokesman. But the pace at which it becomes operational could be adjusted to meet the threat.
The US wants to develop a missile defence shield in Europe to counter the future potential threat from Iranian long-range ballistic missiles, which US intelligence estimates could target Europe and the US by 2015. Russia believes Iran is much further away from developing missiles with that range.
The US hopes to convince Russia that its evaluation of the Iranian threat is inaccurate. Officials point out that Iran tends to deploy missiles much sooner after their initial flight tests than Russia, which they believe has lulled Moscow into a false sense of security.
In Moscow last weekend, the US and Russia agreed to work together to establish the criteria needed to measure Iranian capabilities. But at a joint press conference, Sergei Lavrov, Russias foreign minister, said the process would reaffirm its belief that Iran does not pose an imminent threat.
The US made several proposals on missile defence in Moscow which Mr Lavrov said were interesting. But he stressed that Russia was adamantly opposed to placing the shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, which suggests that compromise will be difficult to reach.
The US hopes the proposal would also encourage Mr Putin, who visited Tehran for the first time this week, to persuade Iran to halt its uranium enrichment programme. The US made clear it was also concerned about Iranian chemical and biological weapons that could be delivered on long-range missiles.
Mr Putin said again this week that Russia did not take the view that Iran was seeking to build a nuclear weapon. The US said the threat posed by Tehrans nuclear and missiles programme is the main reason to build a Europe-based missile defence system.
President George W. Bush said of Iran on Wednesday: If youre interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.
Dan Fried, US assistant secretary of state for Europe, in Brussels said the most immediate threat from Iran disappeared then there would be less urgency for such a defence system.
The US also presented Moscow officials with a new proposal on how Russia, the US and European nations could share early-warning information in a way that would, US officials said, diminish the missile threat to them all.
The proposal is to combine information from Russian radars in Azerbaijan and in southern Russia with information from ship-based radars and from US detectors in the Czech Republic, the UK and elsewhere. Interfax news agency quoting Yuri Baluyevsky, Russian chief of staff, said there was nothing novel in the proposals.
US officials said the sharing of early-warning information would still leave decisions on whether to fire missile interceptors with respective national capitals. They said while the Russians gave no ground on their earlier objections to the system, they did agree to study the proposal.
Russia has conditioned any co-operation on the US stopping talks with Poland and the Czech Republic. It has also put forward its own proposal to integrate the Garbala radar in Azerbaijan into the US missile defence system instead of the Czech radar. But the US says the radars are different types, and says Garbala can only complement, not replace, the X-band tracking radar in the Czech Republic.
Meanwhile, Ali Larijani, Irans top security official, on Wednesday told state TV that Mr Putin had given Iranian authorities a special idea which was being looked into. He refused to give details.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Mr Putin, declined to confirm whether a new proposal had been made.
Other people familiar with the Tehran talks suggested they had provided the Russian president with an opportunity to deliver the message that Iran had to comply with demands to suspend uranium enrichment.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
FT.com / World - US offers Putin deal over missile shield
