Russia's missile warning
With his inauguration still two months away, US President-elect Barack Obama is already facing his first foreign policy challenge. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last week announced plans to station short-range Iskander-M missiles in the Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian enclave bordering Poland and Lithuania, as a measure to "neutralize" a planned US missile-defense system. The announcement took place during Medvedev's first State of the Nation address.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters in Warsaw that Medvedev's remarks should be considered "a political, not a military, declaration." They shouldn't be taken "too seriously," he added.
Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski was more pointed in his criticism. "What is disturbing about this is that, whereas we previously heard [this rhetoric] from generals, now we have heard it from the president," he said. He added that Moscow had recently let Warsaw think that it was interested in measures for building trust. The minister said Medvedev's statement showed that Russia saw itself as a rival to NATO. "We regret that this sort of thinking prevails in Moscow," Sikorski said.
Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of foreign policy at the Duma, the Russian Parliament, told the AFP that the rockets might not be deployed if the next US administration abandoned its missile shield plans in Central Europe.
According to RIA Novosti, the Russian News & Information Agency, deployment of the Iskander-M rockets - which have a possible range of 500 km - would allow Russia to target the entire territory of Poland as well as parts of Germany and the CzechRepublic. The Iskander-M missile is a precision-guided munition reportedly capable of carrying multiple conventional or nuclear warheads.
Moscow has repeatedly expressed its opposition to Washington's plans to place 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and an accompanying radar installation in the CzechRepublic. Deals on the missile shield were signed in Warsaw and Prague this summer, but await ratification.
