PROGRESS WITH POLAND
The Bush administration's plans for a European leg to its missile defense program have just taken a major leap forward. The Agence France-Presse (February 1) reports that, after weeks of diplomatic wrangling with the government of Prime Minister Roland Tusk in Warsaw, Polish and American officials have reached tentative agreement on the deployment of anti-missile interceptors on Polish territory. "We have an agreement in principle," Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has confirmed to reporters. But, Sikorski hastened to add, considerable work on the technical aspects of the envisioned deployment is still needed: "There is still a great deal of work for our experts."
American officials, for their part, are claiming victory over the tentative agreement. According to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the deal has provided the Bush administration's missile defense efforts – which had run into considerable diplomatic difficulty in recent months – with new "momentum." Rice also signaled the likely quid pro quo that will be provided to Poland for its participation in the project. "[T]he United States very much supports the modernization of the forces of the alliance," Rice has told reporters. "We understand that there is a desire for defense modernization in Poland, and particularly for air defense modernization in Poland."
DAMASCUS DIGS IN...
Just four months after an Israeli military strike is believed to have incapacitated its emerging nuclear capability, the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus is again expanding its strategic reach. Ha'aretz (February 10) reports that Syria has successfully developed a new surface-to-surface ballistic missile that will allow Damascus to target Israeli cities with greater accuracy. The missile, Israeli experts say, is essentially a variant of Iran's "Zelzal" short-range missile, and developed as a result of cooperation with Tehran. At least for now, however, these missile moves appear to be defensive, according to Israeli officials. But from Jerusalem’s perspective, the build-up still represents an ominous development: "The problem is that their missiles are being transformed from less-effective weapons into precision weapons that will enable their use against military bases, airports and military depots, which is a very worrying development," the Tel Aviv daily cites a government intelligence source as saying.
...AS ISRAEL MOVES CLOSER TO SHORT-RANGE DEFENSE
Israel, meanwhile, is making a major investment in its capability to defend against short-range missile threats. According to the February 18th edition of the Jerusalem Post, the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is spending "a significant amount of money" on the completion of the "Iron Dome," a short-range anti-missile system capable of intercepting the "Kassam"-type rockets currently being employed by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups. "[T]hese means will give us the capability of stopping short-range rocket attacks including Kassams," Olmert recently told a gathering of political supporters in Jerusalem. "This is applicable to both the northern and the southern fronts" of the country.
MISSILE JITTERS IN MOSCOW
Publicly, the Kremlin may still be a major strategic partner of the Islamic Republic, as well as a key enabler of its nuclear ambitions. Yet Tehran's recent missile moves appear to have set the Russian government increasingly on edge - and raised uncomfortable questions in Moscow about Iran's strategic intentions. On February 4th, Iran tested a new research rocket capable of carrying a satellite into space, reviving worries that the Iranian regime's burgeoning space launch capabilities could give a shot in the arm to its efforts to build an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear payload. The test "raise[s] suspicion towards Iran about its possible desire to create a nuclear weapon," RIA Novosti (February 6) reports Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Losyukov as saying. "Long-range missiles are one of the components of such a [nuclear] weapons system. Naturally, this raises concern."
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