President George Bush held talks at the White House on Monday with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on the deployment of a U.S. missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland.
"There is a commitment to a system that respects Poland's sovereignty and that will ensure that the people of Poland will not be subjected to any undue security risks," the U.S. president said. "This is the kind of issue that all kinds of rumors and worries can grow out of and we just want to assure people that it's necessary and at the same time there will be this modernization effort that will take place."
Tusk said in turn that all the remaining issues of the U.S. missile shield deployment will be soon resolved by experts.
Washington wants to place 10 missile interceptors in Poland, along with the Czech radar, to counter a missile threat from Iran and other "rogue" states. Russia fiercely opposes the plans, viewing them as a destabilizing factor for Europe and a threat to its national security.
Last month Bush received at the White House Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, where they discussed the missile shield plans and the U.S. leader said that the shield was not aimed against Moscow as Russia posed no threat.
"Russia is not a threat to peace," he said. "This is a system to deal with threats that will be evolving in the 21st century."
Speaking last month at his final annual news conference in the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia may have to retarget some of its rockets at the missile defenses that the U.S. is planning to deploy in Central Europe.
The U.S. administration is planning to construct a base for 10 two-stage missile interceptors in Poland, modify its X-band radar on the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific and relocate it to the Czech Republic, and to deploy a new forward-based radar to an unspecified location.
The 2008-2013 budget for the project is estimated at about $4.8 billion.
