Washington has confirmed its plans to deploy interceptor rockets in Romania to counter a potential missile threat from Iran. Breaking the news at a briefing on Thursday, the U.S. State Department's spokesman Philippe Crowley said the case in point was medium-range mobile interceptor rockets to be readied for combat by 2015. Earlier, Romania's President Traian Basescu announced his country's formal consent to accommodate the rockets. A prominent Russian military analyst, Vladimir Yevseyev, says the expediency of these plans causes much doubt.
"First, it is not at all evident that Iran intends to fire missiles at Europe. Proceeding from this assumption, it is safe to conclude that the necessity for deploying a system of that kind in Romania is not evident either. Besides, it's really hard to say now what Iran's possibilities will be like in 2015. Iran's latest space achievements suggest that by that time it might be pretty close to building intercontinental missiles. And then, different interceptor rockets will be needed and in a different place. As for a possible danger to Russia, medium-range interceptor rockets in Romania will not threaten our territory, because they cannot intercept Russian ballistic missiles. From this point of view, Moscow has no reason to worry. On the other hand, it would like to participate in building a collective missile defense in Europe. These plans are currently being discussed without Russia. Perhaps, the United States thinks that Russia's participation is unnecessary and that an exchange of missile data would be quite enough. The signs are that the new Administration is still not ready for a large-scale common missile defense in Europe".
Russia insists that the first step towards this cooperation should be the joint evaluation of potential missile threats, followed by multilateral talks on technical and military means of neutralizing them.
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