Arms race fears as Putin attacks missiles plan
Pastor Dale Morgan
Arms race fears as Putin attacks missiles plan*
By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Last Updated: 1:47am GMT 02/02/2007
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, prompted fears of a renewed arms
race yesterday after he described American plans to move missiles into
eastern Europe as an act of aggression against Moscow.
In comments echoing the rhetoric of an earlier age, Mr Putin said that
Russia would develop a new generation of inter-continental missiles
capable of breaching the defensive shield Washington plans to build in
Poland and the Czech republic.
Vladimir Putin, Putin attacks US missiles plan
Mr Putin pledged an 'extremely effective response'
Last month Washington unveiled plans to construct a radar station and
deploy interceptor missiles in eastern Europe in what it said was an
attempt to counter the growing military threat of rogue states such as Iran.
But Mr Putin, by his own admission in a combative mood, said it was
clear that the Pentagon had Russia rather than Iran in mind, and the
trajectory and range of Teheran's missiles meant that the positioning of
the shield did not make sense.
"These arguments do not hold water, in our opinion, and that has a
direct bearing on us," he said at his annual press conference in the
Kremlin. "And, of course, it will provoke a corresponding reaction."
Pledging an "extremely effective response", the president boasted that
Russia's existing Topol-M missiles were already capable of penetrating
the proposed defence shield but insisted that the threat warranted a
boosting of the country's strategic offensive capabilities.
"We are not going to stop there," he said. "We will develop new
generation systems which will be immune to the anti-missile defence
systems currently being planned. They will be simply powerless." Russia
is already in the process of developing a "hyper-sound, high precision"
missile capable of adjusting altitude and course as they travel and
strike targets within the United States.
Mr Putin's comments are likely to cause alarm but not surprise in
Washington. Relations between Russia and many Western countries are at
the worst since the Cold War as concerns mount over Mr Putin's
democratic record and his purported use of energy as a political lever.
Some military analysts, however, have argued that deployment of a
missile shield in former Warsaw Pact countries was an unnecessarily
provocative move. European leaders will also be concerned by Mr Putin's
revelations that he was considering a proposal, backed by Iran, to
create a gas equivalent of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting
Countries, or Opec.
The move is being seen as an attempt to prevent Europe finding
alternative sources of gas. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has
said the continent should look for ways to reduce its dependency on
Russian energy after Moscow interrupted supplies to Europe for the
second time in 12 months.
Russian officials have begun a drive to boost ties with Algeria, another
major supplier of gas, and Moscow could try to draw the north African
country into the new organisation. Although Opec regularly meets to
decide production quotas that help dictate world prices, Mr Putin said
that the organisation would not be a cartel and insisted that Russia was
a reliable supplier of energy.
The Russian leader again defended the Kremlin against accusations of
involvement in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Mr Putin, a former
KGB officer who went on to head its successor organisation, the FSB,
portrayed the former intelligence officer as a small-time criminal who
had no access to state secrets who was therefore not worth killing.