MOSCOW, June 19 (UPI) -- U.S. President George W. Bush's missile defenses are dying with his presidency, but they might not rest in peace.

The Czech government is on the verge of a crisis. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said his Cabinet might collapse in the fall. He admitted the Cabinet lost a firm majority in Parliament over the possible deployment of a high-frequency radar of the U.S. third positioning strategic missile defense area in the Czech Republic. Environmentalist deputies did not even want to hear about it, while others insist on a nationwide referendum, which the government cannot win because 68 percent of the population is emphatically against the deployment.

The situation in the Czech Republic is not the only bad news for the Pentagon. U.S. relations with Poland are even worse. Warsaw demands that Washington pay $20 billion for the missile interceptor base at Gorsko. Poland wants to spend the money on reforming its armed forces and protecting itself against a potential Russian threat. It is planning, among other things, to buy American Patriot PAC-3 air defense systems.

Moscow generals already have promised Warsaw to retarget their missiles to American positions, and to deploy tactical Iskander-M missiles in the Kaliningrad Region, from where they can reach U.S. ground-based interceptors in Poland. But this is merely a side effect.

What matters more is the Pentagon does not agree with the price. It is offering a thousand times less in the hope the Polish government will pay the rest from its own budget. The talks continue, but their prospects are rather bleak.