U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today suggested that Russia and the United States could cooperatively operate a missile defense system capable of protecting both countries from nuclear attack, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Oct. 13).
"It would be in my view a very positive outcome if some day in the future you see the United States and Russia announcing a joint plan on missile defense," Clinton said in Moscow.
"The biggest immediate threat the world faces are nuclear weapons under the control of groups of people ... who believe that martyrdom or suicide attacks are a positive way to end one's life. That is not Russia and that is not the United States," she said.
Washington has said that its missile defense plans are aimed at countering a growing threat posed by Iran.
Last month, the White House announced it would scrap a Bush administration initiative to deploy 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic. The proposal was ostensibly intended to counter an emerging Iranian long-range missile threat, but Russia opposed the plan as a danger to its strategic security.
A new plan announced by the Obama administration would involve fielding sea-based interceptors around Europe by 2011 and land-based variants of the weapons on the continent by 2015 (Agence France-Presse I/Spacewar.com, Oct. 14).
The United States is "very interested" in working with Russia to establish a Joint Data Exchange Center that would enable the nations to share information on missile launches, Clinton said, adding that Washington has invited a Russian delegation to view a defense site in Colorado.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his nation would require additional details on the new missile defense plan to know whether collaboration could occur, AFP reported.
"The more we get to know this new plan, the easier and faster it will be for us to reach an understanding of whether we can jointly develop a project that would unite not just Russia and the United States, but the Europeans," Lavrov said.
A shared missile defense system, he said, "would allow collective work on the analysis of existing missile threats, and on the basis of this analysis, the development of measures to counter these threats" (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, Oct. 13).
The powers must also reach a shared understanding of what threats the system would be intended to counter, said Russia's delegate to a missile defense discussion conducted by the nations Monday.
"Before we start talking about technical cooperation we need to have a political will, we need to answer the basic political questions -- do we have similar assessments of security challenges to the world?" Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Reuters (Oleg Shchedrov, Reuters, Oct. 14).
Lavrov indicated that the sides had agreed to hold additional talks on the missile defense proposals, Interfax reported (Interfax, Oct. 13).