BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

29/05/2007

U.S. shield makes Europe "powder keg": Putin

By Oleg Shchedrov

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday warned that the deployment of a U.S. missile shield in Europe would turn the continent into "a powder keg".

"We consider it harmful and dangerous to turn Europe into a powder keg and to stuff it with new weapons," Putin told visiting Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates at the Kremlin.

"It creates new and unnecessary risks for the whole system of international and European relations," he told Socrates, whose country takes over the European Union's rotating presidency on July 1.

Russia's Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said it had test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile featuring multiple warheads designed to overcome missile Defense systems.

In Minsk, the president of ex-Soviet Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, with whom Putin quarreled over energy prices in the New Year, urged the Kremlin leader to act jointly with him to counter Washington's plan more effectively.

"We are ready to act jointly with Russia, as long as the Americans are trying to deploy these systems in Europe. I think this is absolutely inadmissible," Belarussian media quoted Lukashenko as telling governors from Russia's Siberian regions.

"We can take appropriate measures ... But it is difficult to do it alone," he said. "At the same time, Russia won't be able to do a thing on its own at the Western border, because Russia has no troops between Moscow and the West."

Russia and Belarus have long planned to form a nebulous "union state" though Moscow has recently cooled to the idea. The two ex-Soviet republics share an integrated air Defense system

Lukashenko, accused in the West of crushing fundamental rights, criticized Russia in the New Year for increasing gas prices and removing preferential oil tariffs. But he has since urged Moscow to forget their spat and work for improved ties.

The United States says the shield is needed to protect against missile attacks from what it calls rogue states such as Iran and North Korea.

It wants to place elements of the shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, but Russia has strongly opposed the project as a threat to its national security.

German Social Democrat leader Kurt Beck also criticized the planned missile shield on Tuesday, calling in a newspaper editorial for a renewed commitment to global disarmament.

Beck, whose SPD governs in a grand coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, was backed by other European socialists visiting Moscow, reflecting misgivings about the U.S. plans from left-of-centre parties in Europe.

(Additional reporting by Andrei Makhovsky in Minsk)

Source:

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL2911343020070529?src=052907_1630_DOUBLEFEATURE_

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