WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday signed an agreement to base anti-missile interceptors in Romania under a NATO missile defense plan that has angered Russia.| Seems like the only good parts of the Obama foreign policy are the ones continued from the Bush foreign policy... |
"The agreement we have just signed will position Romania as a central player in NATO's evolving missile defense capability," Clinton said, noting that the agreement must still be ratified by the U.S. Senate. "With this missile agreement we are jointly building a safer, more secure future for us all."
The Romania deal is part of a larger NATO missile defense plan for Europe that has caused friction with Moscow, which wants a bigger role.
At a NATO summit last November, the allies agreed to develop a new missile defense shield linking systems in the United States and Europe to protect member states against long-range attacks from states such as Iran. The plans involve the stationing of ship-based interceptors in the Mediterranean beginning this year, followed by land-based interceptors in Romania from 2015 and in Poland from 2018.
Russia has agreed to cooperate on the initiative but disagrees over its implementation, saying it should be a single integrated shield rather than two separate defense systems.
| And it wants control over the big red button... |
A State Department factsheet underscored that the SM-3 interceptors are for defensive purposes only and carry no explosive warheads, operating instead by colliding with and destroying incoming missiles.