 |
Russian Official Dismisses U.S. Missile Defense
Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev dismissed a proposed U.S. national missile defense as ineffective, saying that it could easily be defeated by the old Soviet technologies developed in the 1980s to oppose Ronald Reagan's Star Wars plan.
"We had three mighty programs to asymmetrically counteract U.S. national missile defenses during Reagan's 'Star Wars,"' Sergeyev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
He didn't give details, but said that the Soviet Union had spent enough money on the programs to take them beyond the stage of research and development at the moment when they were halted.
"We still have them and can take them up again," Sergeyev said Monday.
Such methods could include adding more warheads to Russia's new single-warhead Topol-M missile or use of decoy warheads to confuse defenders.
Sergeyev said U.S. faith in its defense concept was misplaced.
"The Americans may regard these systems as unique, but we do not share their opinion," he said. "These are really complex technologies, but complex technologies, as a rule, are not reliable."
Sergeyev added that the Russian military could offer its U.S. counterparts proof that missile defense "wouldn't give absolute confidence in its inviolability."
"On the contrary, it will trigger a new spiral in the arms race and ruin the existing system of arms control," Sergeyev said.
China on Tuesday also criticized the systems as a threat to international stability and arms control efforts. Expressing China's "serious concern," Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi warned that missile defenses "will have a far-reaching and extensive negative impact on the global and regional strategic balance and stability."
Such systems "go against the trend of the times and be detrimental to international disarmament and arms control efforts," Sun said at a twice-weekly media briefing in Beijing.
Moscow and China are the leading critics of U.S. proposals to modify the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow for the deployment of a nationwide defense.
In This Section
|