NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Saturday for the Associated Press that NATO hopes that the first elements of its missile defense system in Europe will be ready by the NATO summit in Chicago and will continue efforts to convince Russia to accept this plan. “We will continue to develop NATO missile defense system as we believe that we have great responsibility to protect our populations effectively to the missile threat”, Rasmussen said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the conference delegates that the U.S. missile plan “sets off the alarm” and indicated that it might seriously impact relations with Moscow, writes AP. “It should be absolutely clear that Russia will not support any mechanism that would trigger a new cycle of confrontation. Building opposite alliances is a formula of the past and today may lead to a global catastrophe”, said Lavrov.
“We do not close our doors, we do not over-dramatize the situation, but if missile defense system is evolving as planned in Washington and Brussels, we will have to take action”, he added. “These measures will be taken only if practical developments on missile defense in Europe will gain proportions to represent a potential threat to our defense potential”, the Russian minister said.
NATO Secretary General appreciated however that Moscow is deliberately incorrect on its characterization of the missile system. “You can not think, rationally speaking, that NATO would be any threat to Russia, this is crazy. And it’s a total waste of money to carry weapons and offensive capabilities against NATO territories”, Anders Fogh Rasmussen pointed out, quoted by AP. Saturday in Munich, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, said that the U.S. are building an anti-ballistic missile defense system in Europe that includes a radar station in Turkey and missiles to be stationed in Romania and Poland, and four American ships able to stop missiles will be stationed in Rota, Spain. He said that President Barack Obama emphasized the U.S. commitment to building a missile defense system in Europe, but that this system is not “in any way a threat to Russia”.
