The Czech Republic agreed to provide the site for a U.S. Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) radar installation to guard against missiles launched by nations such as Iran, the Czechs said yesterday.
Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg announced a deal was reached while he attended the NATO Summit in Bucharest, Romania.
Polish leaders have said they are very near agreement to permit the United States to install a GMD interceptors site in their country, placing silos in the ground.
Schwarzenberg said negotiations with the United States on placing the radar at a Czech site are complete, and the official agreement between the two countries will be signed in Prague early next month.
The Czech Republic government distributed a joint U.S.-Czech statement that said:
“This legally-binding agreement calls for the stationing of a U.S. radar in the Czech Republic to track ballistic missiles.
“This agreement is an important step in our efforts to protect our nations and our NATO allies from the growing threat posed by the proliferation of the ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.”
That referred to Middle Eastern nations such as Iran, which is amassing missiles of steadily longer range. Iran also has fired missiles in a mass salvo test, launched a missile from a submerged submarine, and announced plans to place a satellite in orbit, which involves the same basic technology as an intercontinental ballistic missile.
As well, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Israel should be wiped from the map, and some Iranian leaders have denied the Holocaust ever occurred.
Iran also persists in defying world opinion by continuing to develop nuclear materials, which it claims would be used to power an electrical generating plant, even though Russia already has sent Iran enough nuclear materials to power such a generator.
Western leaders fear that Iran instead will use the materials to build nuclear weapons to place atop its missiles, leading to nuclear blackmail of other Middle Eastern nations, European nations and the United States.
To block Iran from doing that, a GMD ballistic missile defense system would essentially make Iranian missiles useless, meaning that if Iran ever launched a nuclear-tipped missile, it could be shot down and obliterated.
President Bush has said this is the reason the United States wishes to build the GMD at this third site, in addition to existing GMD systems in Alaska and California.
Bush will reassure Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a meeting Sunday at Putin’s Black Sea home, that the GMD interceptor missiles in no way could defeat Russian ICBMs, as Putin and other Russian leaders have asserted. Boeing [BA] leads the GMD program.