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Robert
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Robert
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08.06.2007 22:49:15
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Современность;
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ссылки еще нет (динамический контент), вот текст
By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 11 minutes ago
NEW YORK - The United States will pursue its own plans to put a missile defense in Eastern Europe despite Russia's surprise suggestion to locate it outside the region, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The Associated Press Friday.
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In a wide-ranging interview, Rice said Russian President Vladimir Putin's offer to share a Soviet-era radar tracking station in Azerbaijan for the project had caught the Bush administration off guard, but was worth looking into even while missile defense negotiations with Poland and the Czech Republic continue.
She also dismissed as inaccurate comparisons between Iranian-American citizens now held in Iran on espionage suspicions and the 1979 hostage crisis at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and appealed for patience on Iraq.
Her comments came a day after Putin, in an apparent stunning reversal of earlier hardline opposition to missile defense, told President Bush in Germany that Russia was willing to let the United States use the facility in Azerbaijan for the system, which is designed to counter threats to Europe from rogue states.
Rice said it was unclear if Azerbaijan could be an effective host for the tracking station but said Putin's offer was a positive sign even if it is ultimately rejected.
"One does not choose sites for missile defense out of the blue," she said. "It's geometry and geography as to how you intercept a missile."
"This is an idea that has not yet been vetted," Rice said. "We have to see whether Azerbaijan makes any sense in the context of missile defense."
She stressed that Washington would do what it sees fit to deal with the "real security problem" from potential long-range missile launches by Iran and North Korea but noted that Putin's offer could signal a new Russian willingness to cooperate with the United States.
"If it is a way to begin more serious discussions about what we believe is a common threat — which is the threat of the Irans and North Koreas of the world launching missiles — that's a very positive development," Rice said.
"But we are continuing our discussions with the Czech Republic and Poland and we're going to do that, we are continuing our discussions in NATO, and we're going to do that. We will do what is best from the point of view of actually dealing with the problem, which is a real security problem. This isn't a faux security problem."
The United States has been pushing a plan that would put the radar tracking station in the Czech Republic and missile interceptors in Poland to protect European and NATO allies from attacks.
Until Putin's Azerbaijan offer on Thursday, Russia had been vehemently opposed to the entire concept, arguing that it would pose a threat to its nuclear deterrent. On Friday, Putin went further, saying that the missile interceptors could be located in Turkey, or even Iraq or on sea platforms.
On other matters, Rice said in the interview that Iran's detention of at least four Americans is not a new hostage crisis akin to the seizure of U.S. diplomats in Tehran nearly three decades ago.
She called the detentions unwarranted and renewed calls for the release of those held, but said the incident would not stop the United States or others from trying to engage Iran on other matters, including its disputed nuclear program and its alleged support for insurgents in neighboring Iraq.
"These people are not linked up with what we are doing in other" forums, she said rejecting comparisons to the hostage drama. "Let's not try to go back to an historical analogy that I think is a very different set of circumstances."
The United States broke off diplomatic and other ties to Tehran after the storming of the U.S. Embassy there. Iran held the U.S. hostages for 444 days, and the episode sealed Iran as the principal U.S. adversary in the Middle East.
"The embassy situation, I think everybody recognizes, had a special character and it is at the root of why it is very difficult to see the path to normal relations with Iran," Rice said. "This was pretty unprecedented in ... modern diplomatic history."
Iran confirmed Friday for the first time that it is holding an Iranian-American peace activist, the fourth dual citizen it has detained in recent months. U.S. requests for access to the detainees, lodged through Swiss intermediaries, have gone unanswered, according to the State Department.
At the same time, Tehran has denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of a former FBI agent who went missing in Iran in early March.
On Iraq, Rice insisted that the United States was on the right track there despite surging violence and growing calls among lawmakers and the American public for U.S. troops to withdraw at a date certain. She suggested the Iraqi government needs more time to pass an oil revenue-sharing law and take other measures to reconcile warring Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.
"We're going to have to do it, no matter how hard it is," Rice said of the need to pass a new oil law. Now, she said of Iraqis, "No one knows the rules of the game."
Rice also expressed concern about Turkey, which she said could risk expanding regional tensions if Ankara makes a "robust" move of troops into northern Iraq against Kurdish rebels.
The statement by Rice suggested that Washington could do little to halt limited Turkish incursions across the rugged frontier against the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, also known as PKK, which launches raids into southeast Turkey from hideouts in Iraq.
Rice said it's "not good for anybody for a robust move across the border." She described it as "not very good for Iraq and not very good for Turkey."
Turkey established "temporary security zones" near the border on Wednesday after a Turkish security official and an Iraqi Kurdish official said hundreds of Turkish soldiers crossed the border pursuing guerrillas. Turkey's foreign minister denied there was a cross-border operation.
But the Turkish military buildup on the border has raised concerns about a large-scale offensive into the predominantly Kurdish region of northern Iraq. U.S. officials worry its Iraqi Kurdish allies could be drawn into the conflict.