MOSCOW, June 4, 2007
Putin Warns Of Retaliation To Missile Plan
Russian Leader Says U.S.'s Planned European Missile Defenses May Prompt "Retaliatory Steps"
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Play CBS Video Video Russia Hijacks G-8 Summit Russian President Vladimir Putin will use the G-8 Summit as an opportunity to confront the U.S. about a planned NATO anti-missile defense system. Jim Axelrod reports.
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President Bush at the White House, May 31, 2007. He plans to host Russian President Vladimir Putin at his home in Maine in early July. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
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Russian President Vladimir Putin presides a Security Council meeting in the Moscow Kremlin, Saturday, June 2, 2007. Putin warned in an interview published Sunday that U.S. plans to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe would force Moscow to find missile targets of its own in Europe. (AP Photo/ITAR-TASS)
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Speaking to foreign reporters days before he travels to Germany for the annual summit with President Bush and the other Group of Eight leaders, Putin assailed the White House plan to place a radar system in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in neighboring Poland.
In an interview last week, Mr. Bush said he explained to Putin that the new defense system was designed to protect NATO allies from a missile fired by Iran or North Korea, reports CBS News chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod. But neither Iran nor North Korea has a missile that can reach Europe, providing Putin with a way to confront the United States at a critical time for him.
"We are being told the anti-missile defense system is targeted against something that does not exist. Doesn't it seem funny to you, to say the least?" an irritated Putin said.
He added that the planned missile shield would cover Russia's territory up to the Ural Mountains.
"It would be funny if it wasn't so sad," he said.
Putin lamented that the planned system would be "an integral part of the U.S. nuclear arsenal" in Europe — an unprecedented step. "It simply changes the entire configuration of international security."
He said he hoped that U.S. officials would change their minds regarding the missile plan, warning that Moscow was preparing a tit-for-tat response.
"If this doesn't happen, then we disclaim responsibility for our retaliatory steps, because it is not we who are the initiators of the new arms race, which is undoubtedly brewing in Europe," Putin said.
"The strategic balance in the world is being upset and in order to restore this balance without creating an anti-missile defense on our territory we will be creating a system of countering that anti-missile system, which is what we are doing now," Putin said.
Last week, Russia tested a new ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads and a new cruise missile. While Western analysts said the system has probably been under development for several years, Putin has described the test as part of Moscow's response to the U.S. anti-missile plan.
Putin also suggested that Russia could respond to the threat by aiming its nuclear weapons at Europe.
"If a part of the strategic nuclear potential of the United States appears in Europe and, in the opinion of our military specialists will threaten us, then we will have to take appropriate steps in response. What kind of steps? We will have to have new targets in Europe," Putin said, according to a transcript released by the Kremlin. These could be targeted with "ballistic or cruise missiles or maybe a completely new system" he said.
Putin also suggested that in the absence of a real threat from Iranian and North Korean missiles, the U.S. plan could be an attempt to spoil Russia's relations with Europe.
In Iran's first official response to the U.S. missile-defense plan, Supreme National Security Council head Ali Larijani said "claims by U.S. officials that installing a missile defense system in Europe is aimed at confronting Iranian missiles and protecting Europe against Iran is the joke of the year," according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
"The range of Iran's missiles doesn't reach Europe at all," the agency quoted him as saying.
Relations between Moscow and Washington have soured in the past year. The two former Cold War foes are at odds over Washington's missile plans, Russia's conflicts with former Soviet nations — including Ukraine, Georgia and Estonia — and U.S. concerns of democratic backsliding in Russia.
Mr. Bush leaves Washington Monday on an eight-day, six-country European jaunt, including the G-8 meeting in Germany.
The president is beginning his trip in the Czech Republic, with a scheduled arrival in Prague Monday afternoon, and will wrap up his tour with a visit to Poland — the former Soviet satellites where he wants to base major parts of the new shield.
Visiting the two countries on the sidelines of the summit is likely to be taken in Moscow as a very deliberate snub by Mr. Bush.
"This is a distinctive message that is as easily understandable in Russian as it is in English," said Simon Serfaty, a senior adviser to the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The message is that we're going to do what we're going to do, and your concerns about the deployment of some marginal capabilities designed for defense purposes in Central Europe are not going to impress me."
Besides the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland, Bush also has Italy, Albania and Bulgaria on his travel itinerary. He has meetings planned with at least 15 foreign leaders, plus the Pope, and his schedule isn't final yet.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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See all 89 CommentsBecause the US is planning to install a modest missile DEFENSE system in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic, Putin is threatening to AIM missiles AT Europe.
Did I get that right?
That's got to be the ultimate example of Back A**wards Diplomacy %u2013 threatening to CREATE the threat that you allege a proposed defense is defending AGAINST. Only in the paranoid fantasies of Russia! And it sounds like a great way for Putin to make Brownie points with his European neighbors!
But I'm not worried... Dubya looked right into that man's SOUL a few years ago and saw a decent and honest fellow, and by golly that's good enough for me!
Increasingly we in the US have witnessed your returning to your old KGB self, repressing real Russian Democrats, waxing yourself and your cronies rich while the ordinary Russian suffers, sending assassins into Western countries to murder dissidents, something even your old bosses stopped doing in the 1970s and 1980s - witness Solzhenitsyn - supporting Islamonazi terrorist regimes even as you brutally repress Chechnya.
You want a return to the Cold War, fine. We can remove our Western Investments out of Moscow, from IBM to PepsiCo, and you can go back to being the stupid suspicious peasant that you are. Meanwhile our alliances with Czechoslovakia and Poland will only get STRONGER - after all, your scum betrayed both countries in 1939 and 1945. We WON'T this time around.
True - but the real joke, is the joker in the White House and his neocon "advisors" and "stink tanks" whose "political doctrines" include complete abandonment of NPT, a decades long program to protect the world from nuclear proliferation.
We are not creating a safer American or a safer world by allowing these neocons to impliment their outwardly agressive nuclear plans.
Bushit is a patsy of dangerous un-American war-mongers.
Bottom line - If the Europeans want a missle defense, let them put it in themselves. They are perfectly capable of doing so.
Did I get that right?
That's gotta be the ultimate example of Back A**wards Diplomacy. Sounds like a sure-fire way for Putin to make Brownie points with his European neighbors.
But I'm not worried... Dubya looked right into that man's SOUL a few years ago and saw a decent and honest fellow, and by golly that's good enough for me!
I wonder if America's corporations are still planning to open Russia off for offshoring endeavors? (How's that for a ducky conflict of interest?)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=russia+offshoring&btnG=Google Search
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See all 89 Comments