U.S. warns allies of Libyan missile threat
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SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, June 25, 2001
WASHINGTON Ñ The United States has offered its proposed missile defense shield to NATO allies in Europe to protect against intermediate-range missiles and nonconventional weapons from nearby North Africa. U.S. sources said the
administration warned NATO allies in southern Europe that the most likely threat comes from Libya.
The European response has been largely receptive, the officials said. They said Italy
and Spain have quietly welcomed the U.S. missile shield offer.
Spain is said to have offered to station a naval vessel off the Libyan
coast to detect missile launches from the North African country, Middle East Newsline reported. A Spanish
government decision is expected next week.
Libya, the officials said, has been developing an intermediate-range
missile capability with the help of North Korea. A shipment of North Korean
missile components headed for Libya was seized at London's Heathrow airport
in late 1999.
But U.S. officials said the missile shield would not be developed to
merely focus on the Libyan threat. Instead, the shield would be designed to
respond to a range of threats, including those from Iran, Iraq and North
Korea. In each region, the United States would work with allies to develop
missile defense capabilities.
The Madrid-based El Pais daily said Thursday that U.S. and Spanish
defense officials had discussed the plan for the monitoring of Libya during
a meeting in Washington last month. The newspaper said Madrid would use the
U.S. Aegis radar system on four of Spain's F-100 frigates.
The Aegis is said to be capable of detecting any launch in a range of
600 kilometers. U.S. ships would deploy the interceptors required to foil
any Libyan missile attack.
"The United States needs to focus on the capabilities we need rather
than specific threat scenarios or specific enemies," a senior U.S. defense
official said.
Administration officials said Europe's help is vital in launching the
U.S. missile shield. They said the anti-missile project has become a
priority for President George Bush.
"The world is changing, and unless we change we will find ourselves
facing new and daunting threats we did not expect and which we will be
unprepared to meet," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed
Services Committee on Thursday. "Our lack of defenses against ballistic
missiles creates incentives for missile proliferation which Ñ combined with
the development of nuclear, chemical and particularly biological weapons of
mass destruction -- could give future adversaries the incentive to try to
hold our populations hostage to terror and blackmail."
Tripoli is said to have fired a missile toward Italy in 1986. The
missile fell way short of its target.
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