Russia Offers NATO Chief Missile Defense ProposalRussian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev Tuesday offered a proposal to visiting NATO General Secretary George Robertson for protecting Europe from possible missile threats."Our concrete proposal is to develop a European non-strategic missile defense system involving Russia and other European countries," Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, head of the Russian Defense Ministry's international military cooperation department, told the press following a meeting between Sergeyev and Robertson. The proposal sets three stages for the system's deployment. First, a conference of skilled experts will be convened to decide whether there is any threat of non-strategic missile strikes on European countries, Ivashov said. "If experts conclude that such threats exist or could arise, the second step will begin -- to develop a conceptual model for countering or neutralizing the threats by political or other peaceful means," he stressed. "Only at the third stage, if the need for it arises indeed, elements of a missile defense system will be created," he said. " Such elements would be mobile and be deployed in the most threatening directions so as to cover key targets." Ivashov emphasized that this missile defense system " fundamentally differs from what the Americans are suggesting." "It is not defense of the entire territory of Europe or part of it, but a system designed for protecting missile-threatened directions, " he said. Robertson arrived in Moscow on Monday for a three-day working visit, his second trip to Moscow, to warm the NATO-Russian ties frozen after the alliance's aggressive bombing of Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999. |
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