Barack Obama has abandoned the controversial Pentagon plan to build a missile defence system in Europe. The move has prompted angry accusations of betrayal from Washington's eastern European allies but delighted the Kremlin.
In one of the sharpest breaks yet with the policies of the Bush administration, Obama phoned the leaders of Poland and the Czech Republic last night to tell them that he had dropped plans to site missile interceptors and a radar station in their respective countries. Russia had furiously opposed the project, claiming it targeted Moscow's nuclear arsenal.
A planned U.S. missile shield to protect Europe from a possible Iranian attack would be ineffective against the kinds of missiles Iran is likely to deploy, according to a joint analysis by top U.S. and Russian scientists.
The U.S.-Russian team also judged that it would be more than five years before Iran is capable of building both a nuclear warhead and a missile capable of carrying it over long distances. And if Iran attempted such an attack, the experts say, it would ensure its own destruction.
"As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defence system that is cost-effective and proven," he told a crowd of about 20,000 gathered in Hradcany Square, next to Prague Castle.
"Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbours and our allies."
MOSCOW - Russia has shelved plans to install missiles on central Europe's doorstep after detecting a cooling by the Obama administration towards a controversial US shield project, a military official said on Wednesday.
Moscow had warned it would deploy Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave wedged between NATO and EU members Poland and Lithuania, if Washington did not withdraw its controversial European missile shield plan.
![A familiar line: Washington says the missile defence shield will combat 'rogue states' such as Iran. The Polish people, however, have expressed resounding opposition to being placed at the epicenter of a new arms race between the US and Russia. [GALLO/GETTY]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/imagecache/article_image_thumb/files/article_images/missileshield_1204.jpg)
Slupsk, Poland - A small and disused former Warsaw Pact air base in a remote corner of
northwest Poland may soon become the focus of a new conflict
between Russia and the US.
George Bush, the US president, and his administration have chosen
the Redzikowo Base as the site of Washington's new missile defence
shield, which the Americans say is designed to intercept incoming
rockets from "rogue states" such as Iran.
Antagonism between the Kremlin and
the Bush administration over the deployment of missile systems in
Europe deepened yesterday after the US defence secretary, Robert Gates,
accused President Dmitry Medvedev of "provocative, unnecessary and
misguided" plans to station short-range ballistic missiles in Russia's
Baltic exclave, Kaliningrad.
Speaking on a visit to Estonia,
Gates said the plans to place Iskander-M missiles in eastern Europe
were "hardly the welcome a new American administration deserves".
