Mangott said he could understand the sharp rhetoric with which Russia has reacted to the treaty. The rhetoric has two, tactical and strategic, reasons, Mangott said. From the tactical viewpoint, Russia is trying Rice leaves Prague after signing Czech-U.S.
radar treaty ...
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Drogba & Terry recover for final ... to avert the ratification of the treaty in the Czech Parliament by stepping up military threats. From the strategic viewpoint, Moscow really feels threatened, he added. The threat does not lie in the technological and military capabilities of the envisaged installations in the Czech Republic and Poland. Russia's official fear that the missiles in eastern Europe could be equipped with nuclear warheads and used for a surprising attack on Moscow cannot be taken seriously, Mangott said. However, Russia's fear of U.S. military build-up in eastern Europe is substantiated. After the bases were built in Bulgaria and Romania, U.S. troops will also be in the Czech Republic and Poland (or Lithuania) and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said recently in Sofia that more countries would join the anti-missile defence in this or that way, Mangott said. Russia is afraid of military encirclement, especially as the USA is planning military presence also in Georgia (it already has aides there) and it has air bases in Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan, he added. Russia will react by asymmetric military measures, the deployment of tactical nuclear missiles in Kaliningrad and maybe also Belarus, Mangott said. This will breach the informal U.S.-Russian agreement from October 1991 on a radical reduction of tactical nuclear weapons. The deployment of the missiles in Kaliningrad will not violate any treaty, but it will move away another element of security architecture of strategic arms control between the two powers, Mangott said. Russia may also terminate the 1987 treaty on the destruction of ballistic missiles with the range of 500-5500 kilometres. The U.S. anti-missile defence may thus result in further erosion of the disarmament architecture that has been built since 1972, Mangott said. As the treaty SALT 1 expires next year and the Moscow treaty in 2012, the USA withdrew from the ABM treaty in 2001 and 2002 and the treaty of the Conference for Security in Europe on conventional arms in Europe has been suspended, the treaty foundation for arms control is falling apart, Mangott said. The United States wants to build the radar base on the Brdy military grounds, 90 km southwest of Prague, and a base with ten interceptor missiles in Poland within its missile shield. The Central European elements are to protect the United States and a large part of the European continent against missiles that states like Iran might launch.
(Ceske Noviny)
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