Polish president "calm" over Russian warning on anti-missile shield: report

Polish President Lech Kaczynski on Friday said that he reacted "calmly" to Russia's warning against Washington's plan to deploy missile defense systems in Eastern Europe.

The deployment of missile defense systems in Eastern Europe may prompt Moscow to withdraw from a treaty on the elimination of short- and medium-range nuclear arms.

Chief of Russian General Staff Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky said in Washington on Thursday that Russia could unilaterally pull out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty if the U.S. started deploying elements of its national missile defense (NMD) system in the Czech Republic and Poland.

The Polish news agency PAP quoted Kaczynski as stressing that the shield is to protect the U.S. against attacks from territories other than the territory of the Russian Federation.

"That is why such reaction of the Russian side may cause surprise and give grounds for speculations," he said.

On Jan. 20, Washington proposed to build a radar center for its NMD system in the Czech Republic and deploy interceptor rockets in Poland. The base in Poland would supplement two others located in Alaska and California. According to Americans, the shield has been designed to intercept rockets fired at the U.S. from the Middle or Far East.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Russia succeeded it as a party to the INF treaty the Soviet Union had signed with the United States in 1987.

Source: Xinhua