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Russian army official says US missile
shield is aimed at Russia
dpa
Wednesday April 25, 2007
A day after US Defence Secretary Robert Gates
visited Moscow to invite Russia to join as a partner in a planned US
missile-defence shield, a Russian official said the shield was
directed at Russia and could become a target for Russian missiles.
"The concrete, true goal (of the shield) ... is the creation of
defence against the nuclear potential of Russia and China," Yury
Baluyevsky, head of Russia's Armed Forces General Staff, said at a
Moscow press conference.
Baluyevsky's remarks came after the Bush administration dispatched
Gates to invite Russia, the shield's most vociferous opponent, to
cooperate.
The White House has said the shield is aimed at preventing rogue
states like Iran and North Korea from threatening Europe and the
United States with any intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM)
they could develop. Russia argues those countries don't have ICBMs.
Moscow has also taken special issue with Washington's decision to
put elements of the shield in former Soviet satellite states Poland
and the Czech Republic, not far from Russian territory.
After speaking with Russia's defence minister, first deputy prime
minister and President Vladimir Putin, Gates called the meetings
"excellent" and said "real headway" was made in opening
dialogue with
Moscow and allaying "misunderstandings."
On Tuesday, however, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei
Kislyak said at the conference that any possible shield would be a
"serious annoyance in our strategic relations for years ahead,"
Interfax reported.
Kislyak noted, though, that US-Russian relations were "better than
the press writes but worse than they could be."
Baluyevsky, the General Staff head, appealed to Europeans, saying
they would "pay" for the US shield and become "hostages
of a
different game, of the United States' game."
He added the shield's elements could become targets of Russian
forces - "strategic, nuclear or other - it is, as they say, a
technical question."
Russia, he said, was able to create anti-aircraft and anti-missile
defences superior to any that exist, "including the United States',
and I am ready to prove that."
Yet while arguing the shield would be directed at Russia,
Baluyevsky also said Russia would be able in the near future to build
arms that could circumvent the shield.
"That means missiles that fly not along a raised trajectory, like
all ballistic missiles, but along an unpredictable trajectory," he
added.
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