Agence France-Presse,
Prague (AFP): Czech lawmakers visited a US military radar station on the Marshall Islands set for transfer to Eastern Europe as part of Washington's controversial anti-missile defence shield there, the US embassy said Monday. “The radar on the Marshall Islands will be dismantled and brought to the Czech Republic,” embassy spokeswoman Victoria Silverman told AFP.
The radar, used for the past 10 years at the Marshall Islands military base, will be refurbished and updated before being dispatched, according to an embassy website concerning the controversial proposal.
Washington is pushing to build a radar system in the Czech Republic and put missiles in neighbouring Poland to defend against what it says are potential attacks from “rogue” states like Iran.
Prague announced at the end of March that it would launch official negotiations with Washington over hosting the radar station.
The US plan has divided NATO members and provoked a furious reaction from Moscow, which sees the shield proposal as a threat to its national security. Russian officials and NATO representatives are due to discuss those fears at a meeting on April 19.
The combined cost of the Czech-Polish anti-missile system will be around 3.5 billion dollars (2.6 billion euros), the head of the US Missile Defence Agency, General Henry Obering, said in an interview recently published in the Czech daily Dnes.
Domestically, the project to host a foreign base in the former Soviet-dominated country has created tension within Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek's fragile centre-right coalition and split Czech public opinion.
The United States has meanwhile sought to ease fears among the local population at the favoured site for the radar base, around 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Prague, about its health affects and interference, insisting it would have no more impact than a weather or air traffic control radar.
Once bilateral negotiations between Prague and Washington are completed at the end of the year, the Czech parliament will have the final word on whether to accept the plan.
The Czech delegation visiting the radar station on Monday consisted of four lawmakers from Topolanek's rightwing Civic Democrat party, three from the main leftwing opposition Social Democrats party, and one independent member of parliament.
One Christian Democrat and one Communist lawmaker were late in applying for visas and were unable to join the party, the United States embassy here said.
