U.S. explores expanding missile launch sites

By JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers

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U.S. diplomats and Defense Department officials have been quietly talking with NATO members Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic about whether one of them might host the new launch site, U.S., Hungarian and Czech officials said.

The facility would comprise underground silos housing interceptor-tipped missiles that would be fired at enemy missiles as they soared through space. A powerful radar network would guide the interceptors.

A launch site in any of the three former Soviet-bloc nations would be able to defend the United States and its European allies from attacks by small numbers of missiles fired from the Middle East, said U.S. officials.

Iran, whose hard-line Islamic regime is part of what President Bush called "the axis of evil," is believed to be developing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles that might pose such threats in the future, said U.S. officials. Iran denies it is developing long-range missiles or nuclear weapons.

U.S. officials said they are also wary of Syria's missile ambitions, and worried that a terrorist group might one day obtain a long-range missile.

"The president has said ... that the way we conceive missile defense ... will not only protect the United States, but our allies," said a senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "General proliferation of ballistic missiles (is) a threat we will continue to face."

The Bush administration is pursuing the talks with the Eastern Europeans even though its missile-defense program remains fraught with technical problems and has not been tested under realistic conditions, a concern expressed by the Pentagon's own chief weapons tester.

"Here they are moving toward a third missile-defense site without having completed the first site or having successfully proven the system," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington arms-control advocacy group.

Missile-defense advocates contend that the technical problems can be worked out as work on the system matures.

U.S., Hungarian and Czech officials stressed that the discussions are at very preliminary stages.
 
Vratislav Janda, the deputy chief of the Czech Embassy in Washington, said the issue would have to be thoroughly discussed in parliament and by the Czech public before his government could opt to host the facility.

But he said that Czech officials believe such a site could bring advantages, including closer trans-Atlantic security cooperation and work for local businesses.

The Pentagon is constructing rudimentary interceptor-launch sites in California and Alaska as part of a so-called Ground-Based Midcourse Defense. The system would be part of what the Bush administration sees as multilayered anti-missile defenses comprising land-based and sea-based interceptors and airborne lasers that could destroy missiles at different stages of flight.

The interceptor launch sites being built at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, are intended to defend the United States against a limited number of missiles lofted by North Korea.

North Korea in 1998 tested a missile with a range estimated at more than 1,200 miles but since then has been observing a unilateral testing freeze.