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US reiterates intent to forge ahead with missile defense despite Russian opposition
The top U.S. official on missile defense vowed Thursday to forge ahead with plans for a European shield despite mounting Russian threats.
“Let me be clear. While we can work cooperatively together, we cannot agree to the pre-conditions outlined by the Russian government,” special envoy Ellen Tauscher said at a missile defense conference in London, according to a State Department transcript of her remarks. “We are committed to deploying effective missile defenses to protect the U.S. homeland and our Allies and partners around the world from the proliferation of ballistic missiles.
“We will not agree to limitations on the capabilities and numbers of our missile defense systems. We cannot agree to any 'military-technical criteria,' that would, in effect, limit our ability to develop and deploy future missile defense systems that will protect us against regional threats such as Iran and North Korea.”
President Vladimir Putin has vowed to retaliate if NATO and the United States go forward with the third phase of the missile defense shield, the deployment of land-based sites in Poland by 2018. Last week, Russia tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile designed to penetrate NATO's new missile defense shield, describing it as “one of the ... measures being developed by Russia's military and political leadership in response to the U.S. deployment of a global anti-missile system.”
