EASTERN EUROPE Administration is in talks about missile defense system

Critics say the defense system won't work.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
ISTANBUL, Turkey -- The Bush administration is exploring the possibility of expanding the nascent U.S. missile defense system into Eastern Europe as a protection against an attack from the Middle East.
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 told Knight Ridder.
The facility would comprise underground silos housing interceptor-tipped missiles that would be fired at enemy missiles as they soared through space. A network of powerful radars would guide the interceptors into collisions with their targets.
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 is suspect
Iran -- whose hard-line Islamic regime is part of what President Bush called "the axis of evil" -- is thought 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.
Critics doubt it will work
Many critics contend that the system will never work.
"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.
While the talks with Poland were made public last month, the ACA's journal, Arms Control Today, was the first to learn of the discussions with Hungary and the Czech Republic, and is to publish a report on its Web site (www.armscontrol.org) this week. An advanced copy was made available to Knight Ridder, which confirmed the details.
U.S., Hungarian and Czech officials stressed that the discussions are at very preliminary stages, and that numerous issues must be considered before a decision can be made on whether one of the three might host an interceptor site.
"We are totally pre-decisional," said a State Department official, who requested anonymity. "We are just measuring the interest of NATO allies that would be willing to host a third site."
Vratislav Janda, the deputy chief of the Czech Embassy in Washington, said that 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 believed that 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 multi-layered anti-missile defenses comprising land-based and sea-based interceptors and airborne lasers that could destroy missiles at different stages of flight.
Defense against North Korea
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.
The CIA says North Korea may be ready to flight-test a missile capable of reaching parts of the United States "with a nuclear weapon-size payload." Pyongyang is believed to have several nuclear warheads, and has so far rejected U.S. demands to close its nuclear weapons program.