Putin threatens US/EU over Missile Defense.

[American Patriot]

Apr. 27, 2007 16:05 | Updated Apr. 27, 2007 16:14
Putin blasts US missile defense plan
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
MOSCOW
President Vladimir Putin on Friday emphasized Moscow's opposition to the planned US deployment of missile defense systems in central Europe and said Russia will take measures in response.


Putin repeated his rejection of US insistence that the interceptor missiles and radar systems Washington wants to deploy in Poland and the Czech Republic is aimed at neutralizing a potential treat from Iran, saying no such threat exists or is likely to anytime soon.


Israel may get F-22s if nation at risk Moscow has argued that the US is trying to target Russia's strategic missile arsenal.


Putin made the remarks after meeting with Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who said, "I strove to explain to President Putin that from the Czech side this plan is not directed against the Russian Federation."


But Putin said "these systems will control Russian territory up to the Urals, if, of course, we do not take action in response, and we will."


The Ural Mountains divide European Russia from its Asian section. Putin equated the planned missile defense system with the deployment of US missiles in Europe during the Cold War and said it would "cardinally change the security system in Europe."


Russia has repeatedly and vocally criticized the US plan. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates traveled to Moscow this week in an attempt to ease Moscow's concerns, but Russian officials have continued to lash out over the issue.


Putin said Russia was ready to invite "specialists from Poland, the Czech Republic or other countries to prove to them with the very simplest documents that neither terrorists ... nor Iran nor North Korea" has missiles that would require such a defense system."


"We see no argument at all for the deployment of missile defenses systems in Europe, there is no basis for it," he said.


"Iran ... does not have such (missile) systems and they are not foreseen," he said. "As for terrorists, this is just laughable; they use different methods."

[American Patriot]

Putin steps up missiles warning
(Russia threatens the US and EU)
bbc.co.uk ^

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that US plans to build a missile defence system in eastern Europe would raise the risk of "mutual destruction".

Poland and the Czech Republic are keen to allow the US to site missile bases and radars on their territory.

Mr Putin spoke a day after threatening to halt involvement with a treaty limiting conventional arms in Europe.

"The threat of causing mutual damage and even destruction increases many times," he told Russian media.

"This is not just a defence system, this is part of the US nuclear weapons system," the Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying.

Mr Putin was speaking after meeting Czech President Vaclav Klaus.

Tough line

Mr Putin has taken a tough line in recent months over the US plans for missile defence.

His suggestion on Thursday that Russia could suspend membership of the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty was met with "grave concern" by Nato.

Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the agreement was one of the cornerstones of European security.

Mr Putin has accused the US of overstepping its "natural borders" and of his concern at the apparent increase in military bases and systems close to Russia's borders.

Mr Putin's use of the term "mutual destruction" harks back to the rhetoric of the Cold War, when strategists in Russia and the US relied at least partly on the theory of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) to prevent nuclear war.

The theory underpinned the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty of 1972, which limited the development of anti-missile systems.

But the US withdrew from the ABM treaty in 2002, calling it a "relic" from a previous age.

[Brian Baldwin]

If Russia poses no threat then why would they care? Seems to me they'd only get upset if we were putting in offensive missile platforms.