Agence France-Presse,
VILNIUS: Lithuania would consider being the base for a contested US missile shield if Washington asks it, but believes the United States will persuade Poland to host the system, Lithuania's defence minister said Wednesday.
“Lithuania would consider the possibility of participating in the anti-missile shield if asked. We should consider all the pluses and minuses,” Juozas Olekas told Lithuanian public radio.
He however played down any immediate prospect of NATO member Lithuania stepping in to replace alliance ally Poland, adding: “We believe that agreement with Poland will be made”.
Washington on Tuesday had identified Lithuania as a possible alternative site if the grinding negotiations on basing 10 interceptor missile silos in Poland end without agreement.
Earlier Wednesday, Olekas had told AFP that Vilnius was “not discussing the possibility of installing the defence shield in Lithuania with the United States.”
“There are no negotiations on this issue,” he said.
While also underscoring the absence of any talks with the United States, Violeta Gaizauskaite, a spokeswoman for the Lithuanian foreign ministry, said Vilnius favoured wider moves to shield NATO members against potential attacks.
“We are interested in this project and see it as a very important project to increase security. The NATO summit in Bucharest approved this project and we believe it should be implemented,” Gaizauskaite told AFP.
Washington says the missile shield, which would also include a radar base deployed in the Czech Republic, is aimed at protecting against missile attacks from so-called “rogue states” like Iran.
Russia is staunchly opposed to the deployment which it views as a provocative act.
“Our chief negotiator John Rood has briefed the Lithuanian government, but we are not talking or negotiating with Lithuania on missile defence,” Andrew Schilling, spokesman of the US embassy in Warsaw, told AFP Wednesday.
“Our preference is to have the base in northern Poland for political and strategic reasons. If Poland for its own reasons chooses not to accept the site, the US is still committed to missile defence in Europe,” Schilling said.
Earlier this year, US and Polish negotiators agreed by mid-July to submit reports from a handful of expert working groups set up to try to spur the missile talks.
With the potential risks of hosting the silos in mind, Poland has been pushing Washington to offer a massive package of aid to upgrade its armed forces.
As a neighbour of Poland, Lithuania is “concerned about the potential threats that are out there,” Casey noted.
Any moves to talk to Lithuania about the shield would likely be even more sensitive for Moscow than Washington's negotiations with Poland, which broke free from the Soviet bloc in 1989 and joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.
While Poland was a Soviet satellite state, Lithuania was actually ruled from Moscow from World War II until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and joined both NATO and the EU in 2004.
