USA/NATO

U.S. Offi­cial Says NATO Ben­e­fits From Mis­sile Agree­ment

By Jim Gara­mone
Amer­i­can Forces Press Service 

The agree­ment between the Unit­ed States and Poland on bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense is impor­tant for the rela­tion­ship between the two coun­tries and for the NATO alliance, a senior State Depart­ment offi­cial said today. 

John C. Rood, act­ing under­sec­re­tary of state for arms con­trol and inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty — who helped to nego­ti­ate the agree­ment — talked with reporters at the State Depart­ment today. 

The agree­ment, signed Aug. 20, will allow the Unit­ed States to place 10 inter­cep­tor mis­siles in Poland to defend the Euro­pean NATO allies from a mis­sile strike from a rogue state like Iran. A radar site for the sys­tem will be built in the Czech Republic. 

There are two pieces to the agree­ment, Rood said. “One is a bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense agree­ment,” he said. “The sec­ond is a dec­la­ra­tion on a strate­gic coop­er­a­tion between the Unit­ed States and Poland.” 

The mis­sile defense agree­ment is the cul­mi­na­tion of a NATO ini­tia­tive approved by alliance lead­ers at the alliance’s sum­mit in Bucharest, Roma­nia, in April. NATO lead­ers agreed that the mis­sile threat from rogue regimes was grow­ing, and that a sys­tem need­ed to be in place. The sum­mit also called to expand this ini­tial area by explor­ing options for a NATO-wide archi­tec­ture for mis­sile defense. 

“This capa­bil­i­ty will be very impor­tant to our NATO allies, for their secu­ri­ty, just as it’s very impor­tant for the Unit­ed States and Poland,” Rood said. 

NATO remains con­cerned about the mis­sile threat. “As if on cue, the Ira­ni­ans just in the last cou­ple of weeks have launched a space launch vehi­cle, which again demon­strates addi­tion­al capa­bil­i­ties and under­scores the con­cerns we have about the grow­ing mis­sile threat from coun­tries like Iran,” Rood said. “It’s not lim­it­ed to Iran, I should has­ten to add, but it’s cer­tain­ly an addi­tion­al matter.” 

The agree­ment cov­ers how the mis­sile defense facil­i­ty would be oper­at­ed, Rood said. It also cov­ers what the respec­tive roles of the dif­fer­ent par­ties would be, and their rights. 

For exam­ple, he said, the Unit­ed States has under­tak­en a com­mit­ment not to con­duct flight tests of the bal­lis­tic defense inter­cep­tors that would be sta­tioned there out of that site. 

The agree­ment also cov­ers oth­er issues such as com­mand and con­trol, pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment and base access. 

The strate­gic coop­er­a­tion dec­la­ra­tion is the polit­i­cal agree­ment between the coun­tries. In it, the two coun­tries agreed to deep­en and expand secu­ri­ty rela­tion­ships, Rood said. The agree­ment looks at ways to increase coop­er­a­tion and estab­lish­es a frame­work to work togeth­er through estab­lish­ing a high-lev­el strate­gic coop­er­a­tion con­sul­ta­tive group. 

“We also talked about the desire of the Unit­ed States and Poland to pur­sue coop­er­a­tion involv­ing air and mis­sile defense coop­er­a­tion,” he said. 

The agree­ment com­mits the Unit­ed States to deploy an Army Patri­ot bat­tery to Poland. 

“We’ll begin those deploy­ments once, of course, we reach the nec­es­sary agree­ments with the Poles, and that could begin next year,” Rood said. “And then we set the goal of estab­lish­ing a gar­ri­son for the U.S. Army Patri­ot bat­tery in Poland by the year 2012.” 

Oth­er aspects — such as infor­ma­tion shar­ing, defense-indus­tri­al research and tech­nol­o­gy coop­er­a­tion — also are dis­cussed in the agreement. 

“It’s a pret­ty broad cov­er­age in terms of the sub­ject mat­ter in that doc­u­ment, and I think it’s befit­ting of the fact that this is going to be a … sub­stan­tial­ly changed rela­tion­ship between the Unit­ed States and Poland, in that you will have a much greater lev­el of defense coop­er­a­tion,” Rood said. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →