A Russian-American compromise, without the Europeans?

(B2) A few days before the NATO summit, in Bucharest, on April 4 and 5, past the swear words, the Americans and Russians are trying to agree.

The main issue of disagreement concerns the anti-missile shield that the United States wants to set up in Poland (ten anti-interception missiles) and in the Czech Republic (surveillance radar), an installation that the Russians consider a threat to their integrity. territorial. After a final round of talks in Moscow on March 18 and 19, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Pentagon chief Robert Gates handed the Russians a written compromise proposal. And discussions between high-level experts in Washington began on March 26; John Rood, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, leading the American delegation and Sergei Kisliak, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Russian delegation.

The US proposal has several components. It is first of all a series of commitments aimed at limiting the "aggressiveness" of the shield vis-à-vis Russia. No missiles
interceptor would thus be put into operation, in the Polish base, before the United States obtains confirmation that Iran has ballistic missiles capable of reaching Europe. Similarly, the radar deployed in the Czech Republic would not have the ability to track targets on Russian territory. The most innovative element of this proposal is the establishment of joint Russian-American control of the facilities. " We will have the possibility to control the activity of the radar and the real state of the base of the interceptors, both by the human factor and by technical means ". Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov explained in an interview with Izvestia.

The two European states most concerned – Poland and the Czech Republic – attend, somewhat helplessly, this exchange of good practices. If in Prague, we are not hostile to such a control - the
Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra said he was not against the control of two Russian officers accredited to the radar base installed near Brdy, 90 km south-west of Prague - the feeling seems more mixed in Warsaw. As for the European Union, it has chosen the path of silence. As the representative of the Slovenian presidency had affirmed during a session of the Defense sub-committee of the European Parliament, this is a bilateral affair to be settled first within NATO.