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US Congress Considers Cuts for Missile Defense
A U.S. congressional committee voted late Wednesday to reduce funding for the Pentagon’s plan to install missile defense in Europe. The move came as support for Moscow which has been lambasting America’s plans to deploy missiles in Eastern Europe. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will find it hard to ask Russian authorities to soften their stance when she will come to Moscow next Monday. First, she has to win over the country’s lawmakers to endorse the European missile defense plan.
The House Armed Services Committee voted late Wednesday to cut $160 million from the Pentagon’s budget request to begin preparatory work on a radar site in the Czech Republic and missile interceptor site in Poland. The committee said that it would be “premature” to provide the funds before an agreement of Poland and the Czech Republic has been secured. The total of $764 million was cut from the $8.9 billion the administration has sought for the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency in 2008.
The military budget still has to be approved by the whole House of Representatives and the Congress. Similar discussions are underway in the Senate, where the new Democratic majority is also skeptical of missile defense. Democrat Senator Joseph Biden has recently said he is going to press for the dismissal of John Rood, Assistant Secretary for International Security and Non-Proliferation, a major lobbyist of the U.S. antimissile defense.
Heated discussions in the United States are playing into the hands of Moscow ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s Russian visit next week. Antimissile defense will top the agenda at the Moscow talks, a source in the Russian Foreign Minister told Kommersant.
Meanwhile, Moscow has accepted an offer from U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried to discuss antimissile defense, arms control treaties and the modernization of U.S. Trident missiles at bilateral talks.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of May 11, 2007
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