Missile Approval Left Till After Key US Visit

Turkey will wait to implement a deal to site a NATO radar system on its soil until after the prime minister’s return from UN General Assembly meetings this week

NEWS TRANSCRIPT: Russian Foreign Minister Interviewed On U.S. Trip, Mideast, Ties With NATO

MEDIA: BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union
DATE: July 11, 2011

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

Text of report by the website of government-owned Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on 11 July [Interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov by Vladislav Vorobyev; date and place not given: "What Do You Dream of, Cruiser Monterey? Russian Foreign Minister Names the Problems for Which the West Should Not Look for Simple Solutions" - first paragraph is Rossiyskaya Gazeta introduction]

.S. Missile Shield to Cover Entire Bulgaria under New Plan

Ellen Tauscher

The U.S. missile defense shield will cover the entire territory of Europe, including all Bulgaria, according to U.S. Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher.

Reset in Russia-U.S. relations ‘working out’ – Lavrov

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

The reset in Russia-U.S. relations is bearing good fruit, but several disputable points, especially the projected deployment of a NATO missile defense shield in Europe, are still eclipsing bilateral ties, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday.

NATO Offers Russia to Take Part in Missile Defense Project Instead of Seeking Guarantees

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that Moscow should not hope for legally binding guarantees to confirm that the alliance’s prospective missile defense system would not be targeted against Russia.

The missiles mind game

Drawing by Niyaz Karim

The debate on a joint European missile defense system that gained momentum after the Russia-NATO Lisbon Summit in November 2010 has reached its logical conclusion. On the eve of the meeting of Russian and NATO defense ministers, the alliance’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, officially declined Russia’s idea of “sectoral” missile defense and Russia’s demand for legal guarantees that the system would not target Russia. The same was said with total finality at the meeting. The discussion has thus been thrown back to the chronic phase in which it has languished for 10 years (the topic was broached by then-defense minister Sergei Ivanov in the early 2000s).

Forget Missile Defense, the Threat Is Afghanistan

The more I cover global affairs, the more it takes me back to the 1980s when I wrote for the main Soviet military newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda.

MEADS Partner Nations Approve Flight Test Demonstrations of Advanced System Capability

PRNewswire — The National Armaments Directors of Germany, Italy and the United States have approved a revised set of development objectives for the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) program, including two intercept flight tests by 2014.

OPINION: The cyclical nature of Russian-American relations

OPINION:

The negotiations conducted over 8 – 9 June on anti-ballistic missile (ABM) issues as part of NATO-Russia Council can not be called successful. The parties involved did not come to a compromise about the format for Russia’s participation in the “European missile defense” project. This gave rise to a plethora of comments in the Russian and American media about the end of the “reset policy”. Russian-American dialogue, of course, will continue. But no one can deny that this is an alarming sign for Moscow-Washington relations.

Gates, Mullen Defend European Missile Defense

The military’s top leaders defended the U.S. approach to missile defense on Capitol Hill June 15 when questioned about a new report that a key senator says shoots holes in the Obama administration’s European Phased Adaptive Approach (PAA) for defending the continent against ballistic missile attacks.