Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday he feared that a US plan to build a missile defence system in eastern Europe could launch a new arms race. "What has happened in Europe that is so negative that one should need to fill central Europe with arms?" Putin asked at a joint press conference in Vienna with Austrian President Heinz Fischer.
"Why should we build a new base in Bulgaria or a new base in Romania, why install a positioning radar in the Czech Republic and missiles in Poland? "It will lead to nothing else than a new arms race and we find this completely counter-productive," he added, following talks with his Austrian counterpart. He also said that installing such systems was "not necessary and... does not correspond to the reality of the situation in Europe and in the world."
Putin said missiles from Iran, which the shield is supposed to stop, could never reach Europe and that Tehran was not even considering hitting the region. The United States is planning to station 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a tracking radar in the Czech Republic but Moscow has protested that the anti-missile shield poses a strategic threat by undermining its own missile deterrence capabilities.
Austrian President Heinz Fischer told the press conference he and Putin had not had time to discuss the defence missile issue during their first hour of talks but added that the matter could come up later in the day. He also said he favoured a solution in Europe that would allow "the highest level of security with the lowest level of armament."
Last week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Russia the United States would not allow it to block its plan to deploy anti-missile defences in central Europe.
"I don't think anyone expects the United States to permit somehow a veto on American security interests," she told journalists in Moscow after meeting with Putin. Putin arrived Wednesday in Vienna on his first trip abroad since a Russia-EU summit last week that foundered on the issue of democratic freedoms.
Moscow is counting on Austria, a member of the European Union and traditional mediator between Russia and Western Europe, to promote its interests in Western Europe. During his two-day visit, officially focusing on the economy, Putin is to discuss relations between Moscow and Brussels with Austrian President Heinz Fischer and Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, the Kremlin said. Meanwhile Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Wednesday for an emergency meeting to review an arms control deal aimed at reducing forces and weapons in Europe.
Putin has announced a moratorium on Russia's application of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, saying the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) comprising the United States, Canada, and European countries, did not repect it.
Lavrov asked the Vienna-based OSCE to convene a special session to re-examine the CFE signed in Paris in 1990 by Nato member states and the then Soviet-led Warsaw Pact nations, Western diplomatic sources said. The treaty entered into force in 1992 and aimed at reducing forces and armaments of members of the two opposing blocs of the Cold War.
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