MOSCOW, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- Russia's Foreign Ministry has slammed U.S. moves to place ballistic missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic.
"The deployment of a U.S. anti-missile base in Europe is nothing but an attempt to reconfigure the United States' military presence in the region," said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin, according to a report from the RIA Novosti news agency.
"Despite numerous assurances that this [missile defense] base will not be used against Russia, we cannot fail to see this move as part of U.S. plans to set up a strategic component to its military contingent in the region," Kamynin said Friday.
The Russian official was responding to an official U.S. initiative announced Monday to start negotiations with Poland on deploying U.S. BMD systems in that country. On Sunday, the Bush administration said it was considering deploying a radar network for BMD purposes in the Czech Republic. Poland and the Czech Republic are both former Warsaw Pact satellites of the Soviet Union that are now members of the U.S.-led NATO alliance.
