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U.S. offers Russia new radar terms

Gates proposes making joint decisions about threats

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 24th, 2007 issue

In its effort to build a radar base on Czech soil, the United States is continuing to court opponents to the plan, both here and abroad.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates arrived in Prague Oct. 22 to meet with Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek, President Václav Klaus and other government officials the following day.
After the June visit by President George W. Bush, Gates’ visit marks the highest-profile push for the radar.
His Prague trip comes on the heels of a visit to Moscow, where he offered Russia a role in operating the site. Russian officials have long opposed the proposed radar base and accompanying missile silo in Poland, claiming that the United States was planning to use the system against Russia.
Gates and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently offered Russia a series of terms designed to smooth relations, Gates said at an Oct. 23 press conference in Prague.
The U.S. officials guaranteed that the radar would only be deployed in the event of a threat and that Russia would jointly decide the nature of the threat.
They also proposed that the U.S. radar be linked to a radar Russia announced it will build in Azerbaijan, and they said Russia would be able to monitor what the United States was doing in the Czech Republic and Poland, according to Gates.
But the offer will likely fall on deaf ears, according to a London-based expert on Russian security and foreign policy.
“At the moment I do not think that Moscow is ready to accept it,” Yuri Fedorov, a former Soviet dissident who now works for U.K. think tank Chatham House says. “I do not think that this American proposal will change Russian concerns.”
The problem, he says, is a political one and needs a political solution, but that “at the moment there is no prospect of this solution.” The United States will not give up their quest to build the base and “Russia today will not accept any proposal which means that Russia will agree with the American proposal to deploy [the site],” Fedorov says.
The U.S. offer comes after a Russian demand that the United States stop its talks with the Czech Republic and Poland about the radar and missile bases. Russia has long claimed that the bases would be used to monitor its activity and to counter its strategic forces and has threatened to leave the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, leading some to fear another arms race.
The United States insists that the base is not a threat to Russia and is needed to protect Europe and the United States against any future threat from Iran.
“We continue to encourage the Russians to partner with us in missile defense and continue our efforts to reassure them that these facilities are not aimed at Russia and could benefit Russia,” Gates said in Prague.
Meanwhile, polls continue to show that most people here are also opposed to stationing the radar on their soil. More than 200 people convened in the village of Březnice, in the Brdy military area, to voice their concerns about the radar. The mayors of London and Hiroshima addressed the crowd by video, expressing their support of the campaign against the base.  
Jan Májíček, spokesman for the anti-radar base group No To Bases, says that the gathering addressed two main points: the fear of a new arms race and whether they had the power to stop the base from being built.
“It’s a question of democracy,” Májíček says, asserting that the government did not disclose that it was talking to the United States about a possible base before the last elections.
Tomáš Klvaňa, the spokesman for the radar base, says that the government has “done so much already” to try to gain the villages’ support for the base. Since February, government officials have made 25 visits to the Brdy region, he says. In September, the government held a special session there. They have also pledged to invest in the region and assured its residents that the radar poses no health risk, Klvaňa says.
“The government has done more than enough for a reasonable person to provide security and public health guarantees,” he says.
Furthermore, he claims, Brdy area mayors “tell us quite different things” than they tell their constituents. In private talks with the government, many mayors don’t express the reservations about the base that they do in public. “It has something to do with local politics,” Klvaňa says.
On Oct. 23, the government relaunched its informational Web site about the base, called “Against Missiles,” at www.protiraketam.cz. Topolánek and Gates both said they hope to have negotiations completed by the end of the year.

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com


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