 NATO missile shield must not be aimed at Iran: Turkey Ankara (AFP) Nov 19, 2010 - A planned Europe-wide ballistic missile shield for NATO must not be aimed at Iran and there appears to be agreement on this point, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said Friday before leaving to attend the NATO summit in Lisbon. "We are categorically opposed to have a country named (as a threat) and our request appears to have been accepted," he told reporters before leaving Ankara. "Turkey cannot join a project that is aimed at a specific country," Gul said, stressing that NATO was a defensive alliance aimed at defending its members against any ballistic threat and is not an organization designed "to intimidate and threaten." "The project must cover all (NATO) members without exception... It will not be aimed at Iran, we said it," the Turkish president said, adding that Ankara hoped that its request will be endorsed by other NATO allies in Lisbon. Leaders of the 28-member NATO alliance gathered in Lisbon Friday and Saturday were to endorse plans to launch a new Europe-wide ballistic missile shield. Diplomats said there had been intense debate in the run-up to the summit about whether Iran should be targetted as a specific menace in the public document they adopt. Turkey is mindful of its delicate position with neighbouring Iran, however, and has said it will refuse to sign up to a NATO document that names Iran as the threat in the final declaration. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters on Monday that there was "no reason to name specific countries." "The fact is that more than 30 countries have, or are aspiring to get missile technologies with a range sufficient to hit targets in the Euro-Atlantic area," he said. NATO wants to link existing or future national missile defence systems to create an umbrella that would protect all of Europe's population and territory, at a cost of less than 200 million euros, officials say. |
Despite a lukewarm response from Europe, Medvedev has pushed for a common European security strategy uniting the continent that was long split between the West and the Soviet bloc.
"During his address, President Medvedev will voice a number of ideas about how we shall build cooperation in the missile defense sphere in the coming years," said his top foreign policy aide Sergei Prikhodko.
"We believe that the Euro-Atlantic process has indeed been set in motion and we have a good opportunity to work to finally remove dividing lines, move towards a common indivisible security space," he told reporters in the Kremlin.
"Decisions will be taken in the next few years but the consequences will influence the nature of cooperation for decades to come."
At the summit, Russia would like NATO to put its declared willingness to cooperate with Russia on missile defence on paper, Prikhodko said.
"We would like the importance of joint participation in missile defence, which would ensure security, to be reflected in the documents in one way or another," he said.
Moscow, however, will not expect too much too early. "We are realists, we will not ask for the impossible."
US President Barack Obama, who will also attend the gathering, has shelved an initiative by his predecessor George W. Bush to place an anti-missile radar facility in the Czech Republic and interceptors in Poland, opting for what he says is more a flexible system.
Russia and NATO are also expected to agree on a number of documents, including on "reverse transit", which would allow NATO to ship non-lethal cargo from Afghanistan, and common threats, the Kremlin said.
The NATO-Russia summit will mark the highest-level meeting between the two sides since the war between Russia and the pro-Western former Soviet state of Georgia in August 2008 severely strained relations.
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