US signs missile defence deal

2008-07-08 21:34

Prague - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed a missile defence deal with the Czech Republic on Tuesday, describing it as a step forward for global security despite staunch Russian opposition.

The accord permits the sitting of a radar station on Czech soil as part of an extended US missile shield that Washington says is necessary to ward off potential attacks by so-called "rogue" states such as Iran.

The US wants the radar twinned with interceptor missiles in neighbouring Poland, although negotiations with Warsaw have become bogged down with Polish demands for additional security guarantees.

Rice said: "This missile defence agreement is significant as a building block not just for the security of the United States and the Czech Republic but also for the security of Nato and the international community.

"Ballistic missile proliferation is not an imaginary threat."

Russia has denounced the plan as a provocative threat to its own security, despite repeated US assurances.

"We want the system to be transparent to the Russians," Rice insisted Tuesday.

The United States has in the past suggested that Russian inspectors could visit the anti-missile sites, as long as Prague and Warsaw agreed.

In Prague, Greenpeace protestors unrolled a massive image of a target across the city's skyline ahead of Rice's arrival.

"Do not make a target of us," proclaimed the banner at Letna hill overlooking the Czech capital at the foot of a giant metronome erected by the artist Vratislav Novak in 1991 following the collapse of the communist regime.

Polls show around two-thirds of Czech opposed to hosting the US radar.

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said the deal reflected a "joint desire to protect the free world".

Prague was the first leg of a three-country tour that will take Rice to Bulgaria and Georgia where she will renew US support for Tblisi's bid for NATO membership - another bone of contention with Moscow.

She will also try to calm tensions between Moscow and Tblisi over the separatist Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

- AFP