Putin on the attack over US missile defence
The Russian President has stepped up pressure on the Bush administration to freeze plans for an anti-missile defence shield to be located in Europe, by threatening to pull out of a Cold War-era nuclear treaty and warning that the US determination to press ahead risked harming relations with Moscow.
With the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, sitting opposite him during a meeting at his dacha at the start of two days of US-Russia negotiations, President Vladimir Putin surprised his guests by embarking on a spirited monologue in which he said, somewhat cryptically: “We may decide some day to put missile defence systems on the moon but, before we get to that, we may lose a chance for agreement because of you implementing your own plans.”
He also warned that Moscow might pull out of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, which bars the US and Russia from deploying medium-range nuclear missiles, unless the pact is expanded to cover other countries. He did not mention other states by name, but his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, later said Moscow had in mind India and Pakistan which are “closer to our borders than to the US”.
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