Poland To Hold Missile Base?
The United States is holding talks with Poland about establishing a military base there to shoot down long-range missiles fired from the Middle East or Africa that could threaten Europe, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
The possible future base in Poland, which would begin operating no earlier than 2010, would be part of a broader missile-defense system being developed by the United States and would become the first installation in the network outside American territory, U.S. officials said.
Defense officials did not mention any specific countries in the Middle East or Africa as threats to fire long-range missiles at Europe and emphasized that no immediate decision was expected in the talks with Poland.
"The discussions are in the conceptual stage," said Air Force Lt. Col. Tracy O'Grady-Walsh, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
Officials offered no estimate of the cost of establishing the base and did not mention sites in Poland being considered.
Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, whose conservatives won September's general election, said on Monday his government was considering hosting U.S. missile-defense sites.
Marcinkiewicz considers the United States the guarantor of security for Poland and wants his country, a NATO and European Union member, to continue close defense ties with Washington.
"We have been in broad discussions with our NATO allies for three to four years encouraging the alliance to expand its consensus on missile defense to address the full range of missile threats to forces, territory and population centers," O'Grady-Walsh added.
The multibillion-dollar U.S. missile defense system now being developed by the United States is based on the concept of using one missile, an interceptor, to shoot down another missile, fired by an enemy, before it can reach its target.
Creation of a missile defense system has been a goal of many U.S. conservatives dating back to a space-based plan developed under President Ronald Reagan two decades ago. The Pentagon failed to meet its goal of declaring a missile defense system operational in 2004, and critics argued that failures in testing the costly system show it simply does not work.
WELL SITUATED
There are no U.S. military bases in Poland or elsewhere in the former Soviet bloc countries of eastern Europe, but the United States has talked with Romania and Bulgaria about access to bases for U.S. troops as part of an American realignment of forces worldwide.
Officials said Poland, in eastern Europe, is geographically well placed as a location for a base from which interceptors can be fired at missiles heading toward the continent, but said it is possible other sites in Europe could be mulled.
The possible base in Poland would be used to defend against missile threats from the Middle East and Africa, officials said, and would not be designed to defend against potential attacks from Asia.
The Pentagon already has installed interceptor missiles in silos at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but has not declared the system operational.
At the same time the United States consults at NATO and with allies on defending against long-range missile threats, the Pentagon said, the alliance is developing a program to address threats from shorter-range missiles as well. Spain and Italy could be candidates for hosting parts of a system to guard against shorter-range missiles, officials said.