Obama drops missile defence plan; Russia to drop missile deployment plan: envoy

Has Russia sold out Iran?

Obama Offered Deal to Russia in Secret Letter:
WASHINGTON — President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday.
(Source: The New York Times)

… or is it because the missile defense system is a complete failure:

US missile system’s track record: test delays, failed launches, missed targets:
Twenty leading scientists, including 10 Nobel laureates, wrote to President Obama in July to urge the administration to reconsider the European phase of the missile defence system.

“The planned European missile defence system would have essentially no capability to defend against a real missile attack. Independent and US governmental technical analyses have shown that any country that could field a long-range missile could also add decoys and other counter-measures to that missile that would defeat a defence system like that being proposed for Europe,” the letter stated.


missile

President Barack Obama has announced that he is shelving former President Bush’s plans for a missile defence system in Europe.

The project had become a major irritant in relations between the United States and Russia.

Instead of basing long-range interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic, Mr Obama said there would be a redesigned defensive system that would be cheaper and more effective against the threat from Iranian missiles.

First broadcast 17 September 2009

Source: BBC News


Russia to drop missile deployment plan: envoy

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Russia will not deploy new missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave now that the United States has dropped plans to build an anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia’s envoy to NATO said on Friday.

Dmitry Rogozin also welcomed a proposal from NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen for more cooperation with Russia on anti-missile systems.

“It was very positive, very constructive and we have to analyze together all the sec-gen’s proposals for the new beginning of NATO-Russia cooperation,” Rogozin told a news conference.

On Russian plans to deploy medium-range missiles in Kaliningrad, which borders Poland and Lithuania, he said: “I hope you can understand logic … if we have no radars or no missiles in the Czech Republic and Poland, we don’t need to find some response.”

Fri Sep 18, 2009 6:49am EDT

Source: Reuters

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