<http://www.iht.com/> International Herald Tribune
Russia tests missile to penetrate U.S. shield The Associated Press Tuesday, May 29, 2007 MOSCOW: Russia on Tuesday tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile that it said could break through any antimissile defense system, and President Vladimir Putin stepped up his attacks on the proposed U.S. shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, saying its deployment in Europe would turn the Continent into "a powder keg." The United States says the system is aimed at blocking possible attacks by countries such as North Korea and Iran, and that Russia could easily overwhelm such a shield with its huge missile force, but Moscow says the system would destroy the strategic balance of forces in Europe. "We consider it harmful and dangerous to turn Europe into a powder keg and to stuff it with new weapons," Putin said at a press conference with Prime Minister José Sócrates of Portugal, which assumes the European Union's rotating presidency on July 1. "It creates new and unnecessary risks for the whole system of international and European relations." Russian military experts said the new missile was part of the "highly effective response" promised earlier this year by Putin to the shield. "It can overcome any potential entire missile defense systems developed by foreign countries," Colonel General Viktor Yesin told the official Russian Today television channel. A government spokesman said the RS-24 missile was fired Tuesday morning from a mobile launcher from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, about 800 kilometers, or 500 miles, north of Moscow. Less than an hour later, Russia's Strategic Missile Forces command said the missile had hit its targets at the Kura test site on the sparsely inhabited far eastern peninsula of Kamchatka to the north of Japan. "The RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile will strengthen the military potential of Russia's strategic rocket forces to overcome antimissile defense systems and thereby strengthen the potential nuclear deterrent of Russia's strategic nuclear forces," the Strategic Missile Forces command said in a statement. Putin issued his latest broadside against the shield after meeting with Sócrates at the Kremlin on Tuesday. Putin also said he hoped relations with the European Union would improve when its rotating presidency moves from Germany to Portugal, and accused the West of double standards on human rights and used colorful language to make a point about a dispute that has blocked talks on a new partnership deal with the European Union. His remarks echoed a prickly exchange at the Russia-EU summit meeting earlier this month in the Volga River city of Samara, where EU leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, questioned Russia's treatment of opponents and Putin said such criticism was a two-way street. "The death penalty in certain Western countries, secret prisons and torture in Europe, problems with the media in certain European countries, immigration laws in certain European states that don't correspond with the norms of international law - are those also common values?" Putin asked. "So we won't say we are dealing with white and fuzzy creatures on one side and with monsters who have just come out of the forest and have hooves on the other," he said. Putin said that Russia's relations with Portugal were "developing very successfully" and suggested that Portugal's EU presidency, which begins July 1, could bring progress in strained ties between Moscow and the EU. "We are hoping that when Portugal chairs the EU, a new impulse will be given to Russia's relations with its European partners," Putin said during a Kremlin meeting that included members of a large Portuguese delegation. First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, speaking separately from Putin, said the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles by Russia's neighbours to the east and south now posed a "real threat." He said Russia had also successfully tested a tactical cruise missile. The U.S.-Soviet treaty on intermediate nuclear forces is not effective, Ivanov told a military-industrial commission in the southern city of Znamensk, because since its signing "scores of countries have appeared that have such missiles while Russia and the United States are not allowed to have them." "In these conditions, it is necessary to provide our troops with modern, high-precision weapons." Ivanov, a former defense minister and leading hawk, is widely seen as a front-runner to succeed Putin in the presidential election next March, although he has not said whether he will run. The new missile is seen as eventually replacing the aging RS-18s and RS-20s that are the backbone of the country's missile forces, the statement said. Those missiles are known in the West as the SS-19 Stiletto and the SS-18 Satan. Ivanov said the missile was a new version of the Topol-M, first known as the SS-27 in the West, modified to carry multiple-independent warheads, Itar-Tass reported. The first Topol-Ms were commissioned in 1997, but deployment has proceeded slower than planned because of a shortage of funds. Existing Topol-M missiles are capable of hitting targets more than 10,000 kilometers away. Missiles carrying multiple independently targeted warheads are more difficult to intercept and destroy completely once they have been fired, making them much harder to defend against. The new missile would likely be more capable of penetrating missile defense systems than previous models, said Alexander Pikayev, an arms control expert at the Moscow-based Institute for World Economy and International Relations. He said Russia had been working on a version of the Topol-M that could carry multiple warheads, and that its development was probably "inevitable" after the U.S. withdrew from the Soviet-era Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in 2002, preventing the Start II treaty from coming into force. Pikayev concurred with the Russian position that the RS-24 conforms with terms laid down in the Start I treaty, which is in force, and the 2002 Moscow Treaty, which calls for reductions in each country's nuclear arsenal to 1,700-2,000 warheads. _____ _____ <http://www.iht.com/> International Herald TribuneCopyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
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