Russian ambassador: NATO missile defense proposal not enough

Wed, 26 Jan 2011

Brussels - NATO's proposal to link its planned missile defense system with Russia does not go far enough and appears aimed at weakening Russia's nuclear arsenal, the country's ambassador to NATO said Wednesday after talks with alliance diplomats.

Last year, NATO proposed that the alliance and its Cold War foe link their systems in a bid to build trust and security. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accepted an invitation to start talks on the possibilities for cooperation at a summit in Lisbon.

NATO's vision is of "two independent, but coordinated systems working back to back," Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a video posted a week ago.

But Russian Ambassador Dmitry Rogozin said that concept "could not be called cooperation, it's not even a marriage of convenience: it's just living separately in different apartments, with different entrances and addresses."

Speaking after the year's first meeting of the NATO-Russia Council (NRC, the permanent committee of NATO member states and Russia), Rogozin said that he was an "optimist" and that "we are capable of finding a compromise."

But he stressed that Russia wants to see the two sides build a single, shared missile defense system in Europe, "so that, without the participation of one (side's system), the second one cannot be considered as fully operational."

Anything less would mean that the system "will not only be targeted against some violator of the nuclear regime, but more at the Russian strategic nuclear potential," he said.

That demand is highly unlikely to meet the approval of NATO members, as it would imply that the alliance would need the permission of Russia to use its own planned missile defenses.

Separately, the diplomat accused NATO of "hypocrisy" in drawing up secret contingency plans for defending the Baltic States and Poland in the wake of Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia. The plans were revealed by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks late last year.

"Everyone understood that, far too often, 'cooperation' has such hypocritical forms when such beautiful words are spoken but in reality the knife is still in the pocket," he said.

NATO and Russia should pledge to never target any military plans against one another again, he said.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/364397,defence-proposal-not-enough.html.