By Abdulwaheb Al Guyed, KUNA,
Prague : A four-day conference is expected to take place here next week on a US missile shield plan, according to a source of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday.
Speaking to the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA), the source, on anonymity, said it had not been confirmed if US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would attend the conference.
But, Henry Obering, director of the US Missile Defense Agency, and representatives of several Czech and US industrial companies will be present in the meeting, it said.
However, Rice is supposed to be in Prague on July 8th in order to attend the signing of a deal for deploying US missile shield bases in Czech and Poland.
The US says the plan is mainly aimed to intercept missiles possibly to be launched by some countries.
Russia is opposed to the US project as a menace to its security.
Seventy percent of the Czech people object to the deployment of a US military base in their country, calling for public vote for a potential treaty, while the Czech government believes that the US plan will consolidate and beef up security in the country and Europe at large.
Prague hosted a conference on the same purpose in January, during which the conferees discussed a consortium of US companies and Czech research institutes to oversee the construction of a US missile shield base in Czech, the source said.