U.S. asks to build radar in the ČR

A U.S. request to build a radar station in the Czech Republic as part of its missile-defense shield as the new government here faces its first major foreign policy hurdle: the need to remain loyal to NATO while calming objections from Russia.

The radar would detect incoming threats, notably from the Middle East, and work in conjunction with an anti-missile base that the United States is proposing to build in Poland.

The radar station, if approved, would employ some 200 people and could be operational by 2011, officials say. Taken as a whole, the combination radar and missile bases would constitute the third arm of the U.S. missile-defense shield, and the first located on foreign soil.

"We are convinced that the possible deployment of the radar station on our territory is in our interest," Topolánek told the Associated Press Jan. 20. "It will increase security in the Czech Republic and Europe."

Czechs have been in talks with the United States for more than two years about building a shield here. Much of the early negotiations involved proposals to build both a radar station and a missile base somewhere in the Czech countryside. A U.S. Department of Defense delegation toured potential sites last summer.

But the United States changed its request in the end, and made it official only hours after Topolánek's government won a vote of confidence in Parliament Jan. 19.

U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic Richard Graber said the two governments now have to outline future negotiations. Graber expected the talks to address, among other things, legal and environmental issues of building a radar station here.

"I think we're looking at months," Graber said. "This will be a process, and we are at the very beginning of it."

Graber declined to name possible sites for radar station, but said a few were being considered.

Meanwhile, Russia renewed its opposition to a U.S. anti-missile base in Europe, and the fact that the United States has chosen two former Eastern bloc countries appeared to have rankled Russia further, according to press reports.

But Aleksandr Pismenny, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Prague, declined to comment.

Naďa Černá contributed to this report.

Other articles in News (24/01/2007):

• Last call
• Topolánek finally wins confidence
• Seven Days
• Parties debate smoking law fixes
• Activists push for anti-discrimination law
• Land feud threatens pet graveyard
• ČR remembers 1972 JAT airplane explosion
• European Roundup

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