Obama seen likely to hedge on missile defense

[unhappycamper]

Obama seen likely to hedge on missile defense
By Robert Burns - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Feb 13, 2009 6:20:56 EST

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s go-slow approach to missile defenses in Europe is stirring speculation that he is planning either to deep-freeze the costly project he inherited from the Bush administration or use it as a bargaining chip in broader security talks with Russia.

It’s a defense and diplomacy issue with important implications for American policy toward Europe, whose territory the anti-missile system would be meant to protect. And it complicates relations with Russia, which fiercely opposes the missile project, and Iran, whose development of long-range missiles is at the root of the U.S. rationale for pursuing the plan.

Obama has not said how he intends to proceed, stressing only that the system has to be cost-effective and proven and should not divert resources from other national security priorities. But leading defense and foreign policy experts are already taking Obama’s constant repetition of those caveats as signals that he is not eager to plow ahead with the Europe leg of the Bush antimissile plan.

“I think it’s on the back burner,” said James F. Collins, director of Russia studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former ambassador to Moscow. He believes the administration is considering how the issue might fit in a broader set of arms and other negotiations with Moscow.

The Bush plan called for installing 10 silo-based missiles in Poland and a missile-tracking radar in the Czech Republic at a cost of $4.5 billion, with a 2013 target date for having the system up and running. Construction has not yet begun at either site. Together they would provide a means of shooting down a small number of long-range missiles launched from the Middle East by intercepting them in flight outside the Earth’s atmosphere — a so-called “hit-to-kill” technology that critics say needs more rigorous testing.


Rest of article at: http://airforcetimes.com/news/2009/02/ap_obama_missile_defense_021309/%2e