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WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due next week in the Czech Republic to sign a long-sought but controversial missile shield deal amid fears it will further raise tensions with Russia.
US officials did not rule out Rice's making a stop in neighbouring Poland to sign a similar agreement to deploy 10 missile interceptors in that country to complement a planned anti-missile radar in the Czech Republic.
The United States wants to deploy the shield in the central European nations by 2011-2013 to ward off potential attacks by so-called "rogue" states like Iran, but Russia has denounced the plan as a threat to its own security.
If the deals go ahead, analyst Anatol Lievin warned, Washington would see even less cooperation from Russia on issues like halting Iran's enrichment of uranium - which the West fears is aimed at building a nuclear bomb.
"Russian willingness to be helpful - wherever the United States needs the help - will go down by a couple of more rungs," said Lievin, a professor at King's College London and fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington.
A deal under which the Czech Republic would house the radar base was concluded in April.
Rice will leave for a European tour on Monday that will include travel "to the Czech Republic for the purpose of signing an agreement on missile defence," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Thursday.
McCormack did not specify a date, but the Czech newspaper Dnes reported last month that Rice will land in Prague on July 8 to sign the deal with the Czech government.
NATO endorsed the US plan at its April summit in the Romanian capital Bucharest.
But Russia is opposed to having the US missile shield on its doorstep, and public opinion in Poland and the Czech Republic is broadly opposed to the defensive system.
In Warsaw, the Polish government said Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk and US Vice President Dick Cheney discussed US plans to install the missile shield in Poland in a telephone conversation Thursday.
A senior US State Department official who asked not to be named told AFP Thursday that a "tentative agreement" had been reached following two days of talks between Polish and US officials.
But Polish Defence Minister Bogdan Klich countered the claim Thursday in Warsaw, saying no agreement had yet been reached to station the proposed US missile shield on the territory of the formerly communist NATO member.
Polish media said earlier that Tusk's government was not satisfied with Washington's proposals in a first round of talks here earlier this week.
The United States has meanwhile hinted that Lithuania could serve as an alternate site, if the deal with Poland falls through.
In a bid to allay Russian concerns, the United States has for months offered Moscow ways to monitor the sites in central Europe and cooperate broadly on missile defence.
But several analysts only see more tension.
Joseph Cirincione, president of the peace-promoting Ploughshares Fund who spoke to a May 30 gathering in Moscow sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment, fears US-Russia ties will worsen if Washington goes ahead with the deals.
Such ties have "fallen to their worst state since the collapse of the Soviet Union... in large part because of this foolish insistence on missile defence," said Cirincione in an audio tape posted on the Carnegie Endowment website.
"The president is rushing to deploy a technology that doesn't work against a threat that doesn't yet exist," Cirincione argued. "It's a bad idea implemented poorly."
Saying the issue should be dealt with by the next US administration, the Washington Post complained that President George W. Bush's team was rushing to "complete premature and costly deals" with the two central European nations.
"Provided its effectiveness is proven, a European missile defence system may be worth building, but it is time for the Bush administration to stop its deploy-at-all costs crusade," the newspaper said in an editorial on Tuesday.
- AFP/yb
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