A planned US missile shield may not strengthen Europe's security and could hurt Nato's interests if deployed in the face of Russian opposition, British members of parliament said on Sunday. The United States says the anti-missile system is designed to prevent potential attacks from countries such as Iran, but the plan has outraged Moscow which sees it as a threat.
Russia has urged Washington to drop its plan to put 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic. Both former Soviet satellites are now Nato members. Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, made up of legislators from the main political parties, voiced reservations about the US plan in a report on weapons proliferation.
"We are not convinced that, as they are currently envisaged and under current circumstances, the United States' planned ballistic missile defence (BMD) deployments in the Czech Republic and Poland represent a net gain for European security," it said. "We conclude that if the deployments are carried out in the face of opposition from Russia, this could be highly detrimental to Nato's overall security interests," the report said.
It did not elaborate but Moscow has threatened to respond to the shield by placing short-range Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave, between Nato members Poland and Lithuania. If a ballistic missile defence system in Europe were to be developed at all, it should be as a joint system between the United States, Nato and Russia, the committee said.
UK DECISION "REGRETTABLE": The British government's early agreement to allow two Royal Air Force (RAF) bases in Britain to be used as part of the US missile defence system was "regrettable, given that the United States' development of its system involved its abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty," the committee said.
The United States withdrew from the treaty in 2002. The British government supports the missile shield being developed by its closest ally. It has allowed the United States to use two RAF bases in northern England, Menwith Hill and Fylingdales, to receive satellite and radar data for the system.
US President Barack Obama has pledged to press on with the plan as long as Iran poses a threat with its nuclear programme. The committee warned there was a risk that next year's conference to review the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will fail unless there was decisive movement by the five recognised nuclear weapons states - the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain - on nuclear disarmament. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in March Britain was prepared to include its nuclear arsenal in multilateral arms control talks.
That raised media speculation about whether the government might be prepared to scrap plans to replace its ageing Trident submarine-based nuclear weapons system with a new system costing up to 20 billion pounds ($33 billion) at a time when public sector borrowing is soaring because of a deep recession. The committee urged the government to say "whether there are circumstances under which the UK would be prepared to suspend the Trident renewal programme."
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