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BERLIN-Poland is balking at further negotiations with the United States over plans to deploy an anti-ballistic missile shield, prompting Washington to seek out Lithuania, formerly part of the Soviet Union, as a possible alternate location, officials said Wednesday.The American approach to Lithuania is likely to stir fresh tensions with Russia, which has already threatened to take measures if Washington deploys the shield’s missile interceptors in Poland and its radarsin the Czech Republic. Both are NATO countries that once belonged to the defunct, Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.But taking the shield onto former Soviet territory was a suggestion that surprised some European security experts“The last thing we need is another conflict with Russia,” said Gereon Schuch, program director in the Robert Bosch Foundation for Central and Eastern Europe at the German Council for Foreign Affairs.Russia is already angry over NATO’s attempts to expand to Ukraine, another former Soviet republic, especially since NATO’s top representatives completed a visit there this week to see what reforms Ukraine was undertaking in order to start membership talks.Russia has made clear that it would try to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and may retaliate. It is, for example, preparing to introduce visa restrictions for Ukrainians entering Russia.If the United States negotiated to deploy the shield in Lithuania, Russia would almost certainly adopt an even tougher stance toward that country, defense experts said. The Russian defense and security establishment still finds it extremely difficult to accept that the three Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — broke away and became independent from the former Soviet Union in 1991 and subsequently joined the European Union and NATO.“There is no doubt that Russia would exploit this to the full if parts of the U.S missile shield were based here,” said Raimundas Lopata, political science professor at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University.The State Department said its security experts had already spoken to the Lithuanians.“We have had general conversations with the government of Lithuania about missile defense issues,” said Tom Casey, deputy spokesman. “But, certainly, we expect and hope that we will be able to conclude an agreement with Poland in the near future. And we do expect it will work out, so I don’t think there’s going to be a need for any alternatives.”But Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon spokesman, said Tuesday that “there are other options available to us,” adding, “There are several European countries that could host the interceptors and Lithuania is one of them.”Juozas Olekas, the Lithuanian defense minister, said Wednesday that his government was waiting to see what terms Washington might offer.The overtures to Lithuania reflect exasperation on both the Polish and American sides over their negotiations to deploy the shield in Poland.In March, Poland’s center-right government, led by Donald Tusk, presented Washington with a short but costly list of conditions for placing up to 10 inceptors on its territory. The Polish demands included U.S. provision of a mobile air defense system that NATO diplomats have said could cost billions of dollars.Radek Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, said last month that if Warsaw agreed to accept the interceptors and a U.S. presence in the country, it needed to modernize its air defenses to protect itself from threats. The Polish Defense Ministry has said those threats could come from Russia.So far, the United States has rejected the Polish requests, apparently leaving the government in Warsaw with the impression that no deal could be struck with the Bush administration before it leaves office in January. Ministers have said it might even be better to wait until a new administration was in place.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/world/europe/19shield.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
As in the days of Noah...
