Russia Tunes Asia against U.S. Radar
The meeting of defense ministers of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) ended in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, yesterday. Though the announced concern of the event was preparing for the joint military exercise to be held in Russia in August, Russia’s Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov didn’t miss the chance to again lambaste the United States for stationing missile defense systems in Eastern Europe.
In the environment of Russia’s-U.S. toughest standoff, even an ordinary get-together of SCO (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tadjikistan and Uzbekistan) creates impression of a meeting of comrade-in-arms ready to oppose “aggressive plans of the West.”
In Bishkek, defense ministers of SCO states passed, of course, all necessary decisions related to the exercise (Peace Mission 2007) and approved its program. Roughly 4,000 troops of SCO will train August 9 to 17 in Chebarkul, the Chelyabinsk region of Russia.
But the news conference that followed the SCO meeting was a separate event, particularly in part of the speech of Russia’s Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. “Stationing the U.S. missile defense elements in Europe not only violates military and strategic balance but also threatens security cooperation of Russia with the EU and NATO,” the minister was explicit. “Such actions call back the time of the cold war,” Serdyukov pointed out.
“The minister raised the problem that concerns everyone in SCO,” sources with Russia’s Defense Ministry commented, implying that mentioning the U.S. missile defense shield at the summit wasn’t accidental. Exactly in SCO, Moscow may count on assistance of allies, first of all of China. Though the U.S. plans to station a radar and interceptors in Eastern Europe are of little concern to Beijing – the Czech radar will hardly be able to track Chinese missiles – China doesn’t favor Alaska as whereabouts of the U.S. missile defense facilities. Even less, it favors the recent statements of Washington and Tokyo officials about potential creation of a common missile defense system of the United States, Japan and Australia.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of June 28, 2007
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