It is good that NATO admits the threat of a missile attack and it is planning to participate in the U.S. missile defense shield in Europe, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said on Monday.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said during a meeting hosted by the Czech Foreign Ministry that the Alliance is now looking into the possibilities of interconnecting the U.S. system with NATO's and with national systems.
According to Scheffer, the democratic countries cannot wait until the threats come true in the uncertain world of tomorrow and NATO must be able to face the threats jointly.
"We have enough information that leads us to the conviction that we must not underestimate these threats. With regard to the information's confidential character, the public cannot learn it in detail," Topolanek told the same meeting.
He mentioned Iran, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Hezbollah Islamist militant movement among the threats.
"It is difficult for European citizens, who have been living ina relative peace for 60 years and take it for granted, to accept the fact that their peace can be threatened. New York is far away and the 11th September (2001 terrorist attacks) were forgotten," said Topolanek.
He called NATO a space of shared security.
"If we admitted that we can do without the radar and defense missiles in central Europe, we would actually admit that this single space does not exist..." Topolanek added.
The United States plans to build a radar base at the Brdy military district, some 90 km southwest of Czech capital of Prague, along with an interceptor missile base in Poland, but Warsaw has yet to agree to the move.
Russia is strongly opposed to the deployment of the system, saying the plan poses threat to its strategic interests. Some 70 percent of Czech citizens also oppose the project.
Source:Xinhua
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