U.S. and Czech Republic sign agreement on missile shield

[Bangkoktraveler]

International Herald Tribune

July 8, 2008

 

The United States and the Czech Republic signed a landmark accord Tuesday that could allow the Pentagon to deploy part of its controversial antiballistic missile shield on territory once occupied by Soviet troops.

 

The accord, the first of its kind to be reached with an East European country, was signed in Prague by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Czech counterpart, Karel Schwarzenberg, despite strong opposition from Russia.

 

Russia warned Tuesday that the accord could lead to a military response, which the Kremlin has in the past threatened but never specified.

 

President Dmitri Medvedev and his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, who is now the Russian prime minister, had told the United States that the Kremlin saw deployment of the missile shield in this part of Europe as a threat to Russian security. Putin said it could even lead to a new Cold War.

 

But U.S. and Czech officials said the system's radar component, to be stationed south of Prague, would defend the European members of the NATO military alliance and the United States against long-range weapons from the Middle East, particularly Iran.

 

"Ballistic missile proliferation is not an imaginary threat," Rice said Tuesday after meeting the Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek. She said Iran continued to work on tools to build a nuclear bomb, along with long-range missiles that could carry a warhead.

 

Rice is on a European tour that includes Bulgaria and Georgia, but not Poland. The United States hopes to base 10 interceptors there, but Warsaw and Washington have so far failed to reach agreement on the terms.

 

Unlike the leadership of the Czech Republic, the Polish center-right government led by Donald Tusk has taken a tough negotiating stance. In return for hosting the interceptors, Poland has asked the United States to modernize Polish air defenses so that the country could defend itself against any incoming short-range and medium-range missiles.

 

"All the Tusk government is asking is that the U.S. takes the Polish requests seriously instead of simply expecting the Poles to gratefully bow to Washington and accept the U.S. plans without questions," said Rafal Trzaskowski, a European security expert at the Natolin campus of the College of Europe in Warsaw.

 

The accord with Prague, however, is not without its problems.

 

The deal signed Tuesday does not mean that the radar system will be built immediately or that the next U.S. administration will stick to a project that is so far untested.

 

"It's hard for me to believe that that's not a capability an American president is going to want to have," Rice said after the signing ceremony.

 

Negotiations are still taking place on a second treaty that deals with the legal status of U.S. troops to be deployed at the planned radar base. Both treaties must be ratified by Czech legislators, many of whom are skeptical about the project, while the public is largely opposed.

 

Topolanek's coalition government does not have enough seats to assure support for the plans and may need opposition votes. Legislators from the Green Party - the government's junior coalition partner - have indicated they may block the proposals and opposition parties have demanded a national referendum. About two-thirds of Czechs oppose the radar deployment, according to polls.

 

Jiri Schneider, program director at the Prague Security Studies Institute, said the ratification process was further complicated by the fact that few politicians wanted to take a stand on such a divisive issue before regional elections in November.

 

The Czech Republic also takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union in January and is loathe to have its term undermined by internal upheavals.

 

"Ratification will be difficult," Schneider said. "The missile defense plan has sparked a national debate about how exposed we want to be on the international stage."

 

"It also has become symbol for those who oppose the Bush administration and what they view as its unacceptable behavior," he said.

 

Czech political analysts said that, for the older generation, the missile defense plans had tapped into a deep and abiding suspicion of security alliances that stretched back across the past century.

 

In 1938, on the eve of the World War II, Czechoslovakia was carved up by the Allied powers despite having a security agreement with France. In 1968, the country was invaded by troops from the Soviet Union. For the younger generation, opposition to the missile plan has become a way to express discontent with American policies, including the war in Iraq.

 

Jan Tamas, 32, an information technology consultant in Prague who went on a 21-day hunger strike to oppose the plans, said he was motivated to do so by a mistrust of the Bush administration, fears of an arms race and opposition to having foreign troops on Czech soil.

 

"The U.S. says we need missile defense to protect us from Iran," Tamas said. "But they made the same claims in 2003 about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, and they were wrong."

 

But Jiri Dolezal, 43, a commentator for the Czech weekly magazine Reflex, who has held a hunger strike in favor of the missile plans, said installing a radar base in his country would buttress national security and was an important expression of assertiveness after decades of Czech passivity under communist occupation.

 

He called opponents of the plans a fringe of leftist radicals who were succumbing "to traditional Czech cowardice."

 

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