US would welcome Russian plans to halt missile deployment (Extra)

Jan 28, 2009, 17:43 GMT

Washington - The United States welcomed Russia's reported abandonment of plans to deploy missiles to a small territory in Eastern Europe in an attempt to usher in more cooperative relations with US President Barack Obama.

'It's a positive development if, indeed, that is the case,' US State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood said Wednesday in response to Russian media reports that the Kremlin was dropping the plans.

The Russian news agency Interfax quoted an unnamed top military official declaring that Moscow was casting aside plans to base Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, a Baltic Sea enclave squeezed between Poland and Lithuania.

The official said the decision was made under the impression that Obama will not forge ahead with the Bush-era policy to field a missile-defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic, a dispute that helped drag US-Russian relations to the lowest point since the end of the Cold War.

The Obama administration has said it was reviewing the missile- defence deployment as part of a broader policy review, but has not said whether it will go ahead with the plans to place 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic.

Obama has been sceptical about the technical feasibility of the long-range ballistic missile defence system, but has yet to announce a firm policy about whether to proceed with the deployment.

'The president stated very clearly that we'll be looking at the whole missile-defense issue,' Wood said. 'And if it is proven workable, then we will fully support it. But that's still to be reviewed.'

Washington argues the system is needed to counter Iran's growing ballistic missile capabilities and that the basing of the system in Europe does not threaten Russia's vast nuclear arsenal. Moscow disagrees.

President Dmitry Medvedev announced one day after Obama's victory in the November 4 election that Russia would place the Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad - an escalation of the dispute. But the Kremlin appeared to be backing off those plans in order to reach out to the new president.

'The realization of these plans has been suspended in connection with the fact that that the new US administration is not forging ahead with plans to deploy US missile defence elements in Poland and the Czech Republic,' Interfax quoted the Russian military official as saying.

Obama has adopted the Bush administration policy of seeking to cooperate with Russia on missile defence to promote mutual security interests, but Moscow has been unwilling to accept a system in countries once under the Soviet sphere of influence.

'Russia is clearly not the target of our missile defense endeavors - Iran is,' Defence Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday. 'We have a mutual concern there.'

Gates said he expected Obama to begin formulating the US policy on missile defence and cooperation with Russia 'pretty soon.'

Obama spoke with Medvedev on Monday to explore ways to improve relations between the two countries. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has also spoken with her counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Wood said, without providing details of the conversation.