NEW YORK, May 22: The Bush administration is moving to establish a new anti-missile site in Europe that would be designed to stop attacks by Iran against the United States and its European allies, the New York Times said on Monday.
The administration’s proposal, which comes amid rising concerns about Iran’s suspected programme to develop nuclear weapons, calls for installing 10 antimissile interceptors at a European site by 2011.
Poland and the Czech Republic are among the nations under consideration, the newspaper said.
Citing Pentagon officials, the newspaper said a recommendation on a European site is expected to be made this summer to Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
The Pentagon has asked Congress for $56 million to begin initial work on the long-envisioned antimissile site, a request that has run into some opposition in Congress.
The final cost, including the interceptors themselves, is estimated at $1.6 billion, the Times said.
The Times noted the establishment of an antimissile base in Eastern Europe would have enormous political implications.
The deployment of interceptors in Poland, for example, would create the first permanent American military presence on that nation’s soil and further solidify the close ties between the defence establishments of the two nations.
While the plan has been described in Congressional testimony and in published reports, it has received relatively little attention in the United States.
But it is a subject of lively discussion in Poland and has also prompted Russian charges that Washington’s hidden agenda is to expand the American presence in the former Warsaw Pact nation, the newspaper said.
Gen. Yuri N. Baluyevsky, the chief of the Russian military’s general staff, has sought to stir up Polish opposition to the plan, the Times said.
“What can we do?” General Baluyevsky told the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza in December.
“Go ahead and build that shield. You have to think, though, what will fall on your heads afterward.
“I do not foresee a nuclear conflict between Russia and the West. We do not have such plans. However, it is understandable that countries that are part of such a shield increase their risk.”
The proposed antimissile site is the latest chapter in the long-running saga of the United States missile defence programme, which began with President Reagan’s expansive vision of a space-based antimissile shield, the newspaper said.
