United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dismissed as nonsense on Thursday concerns in Moscow that a planned US missile shield in Eastern Europe could pose a strategic threat to Russia.
In a further sign of growing tensions between Russia and the West, President Vladimir Putin in Moscow declared a moratorium on a key 1990 European arms treaty, citing the row over the shield and the failure of Nato states to ratify the arms pact.
Speaking before a Nato-Russia meeting in Oslo, Rice affirmed that Washington remained ready to discuss with Russia its plan to construct a shield to pre-empt potential threats from Iran.
”The idea that somehow 10 interceptors and a few radars in Eastern Europe are going to threaten the Soviet strategic deterrent is purely ludicrous and everybody knows it,” she told a news conference.
”The Russians have thousands of warheads. The idea that you can somehow stop the Russian strategic nuclear deterrent with a few interceptors just doesn’t make sense.”
Rice said the US wanted to talk to Russia to ”demystify” the plan to site 10 interceptor rockets in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic, a project that has also jangled nerves among several European allies.
”We are very happy to continue this dialogue but we have to continue on a basis of a realistic assessments of what we are proposing, not one that is grounded somehow in the 1980s.”
Moscow has repeatedly rejected US offers to cooperate on the missile shield and Putin’s move to freeze the so-called Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) was the latest broadside from Moscow against the plan.
”[Nato countries] are … building up military bases on our borders and, more than that, they are also planning to station elements of anti-missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic,” Putin said.
”In this connection, I consider it expedient to declare a moratorium on Russia’s implementation of this treaty — in any case, until all countries of the world have ratified and started to strictly implement it,” Putin said in his annual address to both houses of Parliament.
Thorn Nato-Russia ties
The CFE Treaty was negotiated in the months after the Cold War among the then-22 member states of Nato and the Warsaw Pact countries with the goal to achieve verifiable reductions in conventional military equipment. It was adapted in 1999.
Moscow has been angered by the refusal of Nato states to ratify the adapted version of the pact until Russia withdraws its troops from Georgia and Moldova, and has regularly cited the dispute over the treaty’s status as a thorn in Nato-Russia ties.
The step comes after the US cited progress in winning its allies round to the project, with alliance diplomats saying there was a growing awareness in Nato that Washington would move ahead with the shield anyhow.
However, German Deputy Foreign Minister Gernot Erler told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper in an interview published on Wednesday that at least six unnamed allies including Germany, raised doubts about the project at a Nato meeting last week.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere also said his country was sceptical in a joint news conference with Rice.
”I am still in listening mode and I am still to be convinced about the threat,” he told reporters on Thursday. — Reuters