Gates is too warm

The Pentagon chief told the Germans about Moscow's hesitation

Yesterday, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was received in Berlin . The meeting at the airport was held with military honors, which was intended to symbolize the continued strength of the transatlantic partnership. Mr. Gates's first interlocutor in the German capital was Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier, followed by negotiations with Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung. In both cases, the agenda was determined by plans to involve Europe in the US missile defense system, which were far from unambiguous even in the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance.

The hosts of the meeting knew that the Kremlin reacted coldly to American proposals for Russian participation in the missile defense program . At a press conference in Berlin, Mr. Gates announced that there is no unity among the Russian leadership regarding American proposals. “This does not surprise me,” said the former head of the US CIA. Gates suggested that he had spoken "too warmly" in public about the content of missile defense talks in Moscow earlier this week, allegedly prompting criticism from Russian officials after his departure. “I have no doubt that there is a debate in Moscow about how to respond,” concluded Robert Gates.

Berlin understands that deepening confrontation between the United States and Russia will have a bad impact on the stability of Europe. And therefore the German leadership does not hide its skepticism towards the American program. On the eve of Robert Gates's visit, German Foreign Minister Gernot Erler "corrected" the recent statement of NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who said that the bloc's member countries have no objections to the deployment of elements of a missile defense system in Europe. “This was a somewhat abbreviated representation of the true processes. At least six NATO countries, including Germany, have formulated their doubts or questions,” Mr. Erler noted in an interview with the capital’s Berliner Zeitung. The diplomat expressed satisfaction with the start of negotiations between Washington and Moscow on this issue: “Transparency is necessary so that a new confrontation in Europe does not arise from the missile program.”

German Defense Minister Josef Jung sees the future of the missile defense project more optimistically than diplomats. He is confident that it is quite possible to convince Russia of the need for a missile umbrella. Moscow's doubts could be dispelled by "drawing the attention of Russian leaders to a joint interest in protecting against missiles from problem states." Yesterday at a press conference, Jung supported his American colleague - they say that the deployment of missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic proposed by the United States is “defensive in nature” and “the fears voiced by Russia are completely unfounded.”

Yuri Shpakov, Berlin