Agence France-Presse,
Prague: NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Monday the alliance supports the installation of an American radar base in the Czech Republic as well as a missile shield for its allies.
“We need to be pro-active as NATO on why we need a missile defence and this is why I'm in Prague today,” Scheffer said at a missile defence conference.
The Czech government is preparing to sign an accord for the installation on its territory of a powerful antimissile radar set to be linked to another in Poland, to complete a missile shield system created by the Pentagon.
“The development of a so-called third site in Europe will be an important contribution to the protection of the allies, but it will not protect all of them,” said Scheffer.
“We need US sensors, but we also need other sensors and we need to link them.”
The aim of the European installations is to guard against any threat from “rogue states” such as Iran, but has angered Moscow which sees the measure as a threat to its own security.
The project is not certain to be adopted by parliament and has been met with hostility by the Czech public.
At the last NATO summit in Bucharest, leaders of the 26 allied member countries supported the US missile shield, but underscored that four southeastern European countries wpuld not be covered by the shield: Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey.
