By DPA,
Prague : Expectations that the US is to scrap a planned missile defence system in eastern Europe grew Thursday, with the Czech prime minister saying that US President Barack Obama told him Washington was pulling out of the project.
“Today shortly after midnight, American President Barack Obama contacted me by telephone to inform me that his government is pulling out from the plan to build a radar for the anti-missile defence system on the territory of the Czech Republic,” Jan Fischer told journalists in Prague.
“Poland was informed in the same way about this plan,” Fischer added. Washington has yet to make a formal statement on the issue.
Fischer said that the US now views short and medium-range missiles as a greater threat to its security compared to potential Iranian long-range missiles.
Fischer’s comments follow a report in the Wall Street Journal Thursday that the White House is to argue the Bush-era project can be halted because Iran has been slower in building long-range missiles than previously estimated.
The system, which was to include 10 defensive missile stations in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic, had angered Russia.
Meanwhile, US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Ellen Tauscher, was travelling between Prague and Warsaw Thursday for meetings with government officials.
Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister Stanislaw Komorowski confirmed a Thursday morning meeting over the defence system in Warsaw between Polish and US delegations including US ambassador Victor Ashe.
Former Solidarity leader Lech Walesa said he had expected that the Obama administration would drop the missile defence plan.
“The Americans always cared about their (own) interests. They used everybody else,” Walesa said. “It wasn’t that the shield was that important, but it’s about the way. The way of treating us.”
The Polish media appeared to complain that the Czechs had been informed first of any possible cancellation. “The Czechs already know,” said a headline on news website tvn24. “The American delegation is barely on its way to Poland.”
Moscow reacted cautiously to the report, with a spokesman for the Russian foreign ministry saying “it would be good news for Russia”.
The spokesman went on to say that if the US was indeed reconsidering the facilities, Russia’s unease with the project must have been taken into consideration, according to the Interfax news agency.
While the Bush administration had insisted that the bases would protect the West against potential long-range missiles from so-called “rogue” states such as Iran, Moscow saw the project as a threat to its own security.