In These New Times

Atheo News

20th December, 2008

Press TV ~ Moscow offers to retreat from renovating its nuclear arsenal, but wants President-elect Obama to shelve the missile shield plans in return. 

Russia “will undoubtedly respond adequately” should the future US administration make such a compromise, missile chief Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov was quoted by Interfax as saying on Friday. 

The offer is largely viewed as a great opportunity that the president-elect would not want to miss amid a global financial meltdown that has brought the US economy into a recession. Many believe a confrontation with Russia at this point could only further damage America’s image. 

Solovtsov passed the comments offering Washington yet another opportunity to scrap its plans for a global missile defense shield after President Dmitry Medvedev proposed ‘the Zero Option’ – mutual removal of the missile facilities from Europe. 

Moscow says the project, due for partial installation in Poland and the Czech Republic, is aimed at creating a ‘nuclear deterrent’ against Russia and was originally devised to dent the country’s security. 

Washington, however, claims the 10 missile interceptors and the radar system are aimed at warding off potential threats from ‘rogue states such as Iran’, saying the country may enhance its missile capabilities over the next ten years and emerge as an actual threat. 

Last month, Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin dismissed as ‘fairy tales’ the necessity to install the facility “thousands of kilometers from Tehran on the coast of the Baltic Sea.” 

In late November, The commander-in-chief of Russia’s armed forces, Dmitry Medvedev, called for a complete renewal of the country’s nuclear arsenal. 

“We are not planning to frighten anyone…. We are simply doing that which is called for by today’s realities,” Solovtsov said about the planned retaliatory measures. 

The general, who heads the Russian Strategic Missile Forces (RSVN), added that the US, as well, had to forgo deployment of “other elements of strategic missile defense” to ensure the Russian about-face.