MISSILE DEFENCE SYSTEM COULD
REMOVE
RISK OF PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE ON IRAN –
SPEAKER SAYS
A
European missile defence system could make a
US
pre-emptive strike against Iran
much less likely, NATO parliamentarians heard today
(Saturday).
In
an address to the NATO Parliamentary AssemblyÂ’s (NATO PAÂ’s) Science and
Technology and Defence and Security Committees, Robert Bell, Senior
Vice-President of SAIC, reiterated the view that placing anti-missile sites in
Eastern
Europe
could prevent a war with Iran
by building an effective deterrent.
Mr Bell, a former official in the Clinton administration, quoted a
recent interview with the current Assistant Secretary of State John Rood in
which he stressed that a European missile defence system would both make it
“less tempting for Iran to launch a first strike and could also dissuade the US
from believing it had no alternative to a pre-emptive strike of its
own.”
In
addition, Mr Bell stressed that the missile defence proposal, strongly opposed
by Russia
which sees it as a fundamental change to its current defence structure, provided
a “Third
Way”
between a nuclear-armed Iran
and a pre-emptive strike. He said this would reinforce the diplomatic approach
by buying more time for negotiations to succeed.
Mr Bell also told the meeting in Reykjavik in Iceland where the NATO
PA, which brings together some 248 delegates from 26 NATO to member states,
is currently holdings its annual session, that other NATO countries would be
able to “bolt on” to the missile defence shield for a fraction of the cost of
deploying its own defence shield to protect itself from Iranian short - and
medium-range missile threats.
General
Vladimir Nikishin of the Russian
Federation,
also addressed the NATO PA joint committee meeting and took a very divergent
view. He told the parliamentarians that Europe,
Russia
and the United
States
were not targets for missile attacks from
Iran.
He
pointed out that IranÂ’s
current missiles were unable to travel the required distances and when they
could following improvements to launching techniques they were unable to carry
the load required for a nuclear warhead.
“American
forecasts of Iranian achievements in the field of ballistic missiles development
are extremely excessive,” he stressed, adding: that the status and prospective
of Iranian missile potential “are not so persuasive as to the need to deploy
global MD sites in Europe.”
He
added that this meant that US plans were dangerous in that they had left to the
perception that the missile defence plans are directed against
Russia
and that that illusion of US
invulnerability thereby subsequently created could lead to inadequate
actions.
NATO
PA PRESS OFFICE
Laugardalshöllin Exhibition Centre, Level
1 | room 170
±
Jonathan Clayton, Press Officer
Mobile:
+ 354 617 1841
±
Roberta
Calorio
Media
relations Co-ordinator
Mobile: +354 617 1850