USA re-assures Russia anti-missile system is not a threat

Head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency Henry Obering has defined the main goal of deploying the U.S. anti-missile system in Poland and Check Republic and stressed it has no capability of threatening Russia.

Mr Obering said the main goal of deploying the anti-missile system in Poland and Check Republic is to protect the U.S. from the so-called rouge regimes, like Iran and North Korea.

U.S. officials admitted that today these regimes have no nuclear ability to reach the U.S., but underscored they may obtain it in the near future. So, the aim of the system is to counter what U.S. authorities claimed to be a long-range Iranian missile threat by 2011 or 2012.

Furthermore, the U.S. makes every effort to convince Russia, which opposes the deployment of this system, that the system cannot be considered as a threat to Russia, maintaining that it is designed strictly to protect the U.S. against the possible threat from Iran and North Korea and not aimed at Russian huge nuclear arsenal.

Last week, Mr Obering said that the system is geared towards and directed towards rouge-regime missiles' capabilities, and those regimes obviously do not have such sophisticated ballistic missiles' fleets as Russia has. He added that the U.S. interceptors would not be physically capable of catching long-range Russian missiles.