Russia, Moscow / corr Trend z R.Agayev / A proposal by Russian President Vladimir Putin on joint use of the Gabala Radar Station with the United States remains is till in force, an official of the Russian Foreign Ministry said in Moscow on 8 November on condition of anonymity.
"President Putin would not put forward proposals unless we wished to give any alternatives to US plans of installing Anti-Missile Defense elements in Europe. Therefore, our proposal remains in force," he said.
The consultations will be held with Azerbaijani counterparts on the further development of consultations with the United States. Russian military and diplomats are prepared to inform the Azerbaijani side.
According to the diplomat, the cooperation in the anti-missile defense should be multilateral and collective. Russia critically approaches the US plans of making the anti-missile shield in the global scale for itself. "Now the Americans say that this shield is needed for covering own allies and the US troops abroad and therefore, it is of global character. However, the Russian side assures that should there any security challenge, every country is free in taking a decision for its security. It is also necessary to find a collective reply," the Russian official said.
"We also predict possible threat of missile attacks. But we do not relate it to a concrete country, though Americans say concretely that it is against Iran. It is not right to speak in this way," he said. There are countries, such as Pakistan, where everything is kept under President Musharraf's control. If the extremist forces come to power there, they will obtain an access to missiles, which can bring nuclear war-heads. "It is really a potential threat and needs consideration. However, the answer should be collective, therefore we worked at NATO, Russian-NATO Alliance to review details of the military-technical aspect of such reply in the AMD system and theater of military actions, an official of the Foreign Ministry said. It will be enough for the existing and forecasted potential threats for the nearest 10-20 years, whereas American went through absolutely another way.
The Russian diplomat said that the US approach show that they are interested in this proposal, but the essence of their proposal is to build and set up the third position region in Europe, whereas the essence of Russia's proposal is that not to build the AMD elements, but hold joint collective monitoring into the situation in this missile dangerous direction from the south. The Gabala RS assumes key importance, the diplomat assures.
He said in this respect that during the Americans' visit to Gabala, they saw the opportunities of the station, concrete technical data, as well as materials regarding launch of all missiles during the Iranian-Iraqi war. It made great impression on Americans.
"There is one more milestone. The station enables to observe over the large region, any missile launch, even if Iran tests long-distance missiles, it will be revealed and analyzed jointly and can serve a base for any reply measures," he said. Iran has neither such intentions, nor relevant technical base for the establishment of missiles of far distance, the Gabala Radar Station works in quite monitoring routine.
"Americans need something different - they need radars, which lead to the target, whereas Gabala Radar Station has not such allocation, though such allocation can be дает строящийся в Чехии радар особого диапазона, поэтому американцы стараются исходить из их заинтересованности строительства таких радаров в Чехии и Польше," representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry stressed.