Rice to candidates: Save missile shield

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By Nicholas Kralev

PRAGUE -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued an impassioned plea to likely presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain Tuesday to continue pushing for a missile defense shield in Europe.

Miss Rice made the remarks while signing an agreement with the Czech Republic to base a tracking radar here.

The secretary conceded that an effective missile shield system is yet to be fully developed, but she insisted that construction should begin soon nevertheless because the missile threat from Iran is not "imaginary."

"This missile defense agreement is significant as a building block, not just for the security of the United States and the Czech Republic, but also for the security of NATO and the security of the international community as a whole," Miss Rice said.

"Ballistic missile proliferation is not an imaginary threat," she added. "It's hard for me to believe that an American president is not going to want to have the capability to defend our territory, the territory of our allies -- whether they are in Europe or in the Middle East -- against that kind of missile threat."

Neither of the two presumptive presidential candidates has spoken at length about the Bush administration plan to put radar in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in Poland.

Mr. McCain, however, is considered a supporter of missile defense in principle, saying it could protect the U.S. from blackmail by rogue states and also protect against potential threats from strategic competitors such as a resurgent Russia or China.

Mr. Obama has voiced doubts about the effectiveness and the cost of existing technology to shoot down incoming missiles.

"I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space," Mr. Obama said last year.

Critics of the system say there is no proof it works, and the Iran threat is too distant.

The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency estimates that Iran could develop a long-range missile capable of striking the United Sates by 2015.

Miss Rice's call on Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain to continue the Bush administration's pursuit of the European based system was a tacit acknowledgement that key decisions await the next administration.

A deal to put interceptor missiles in Poland has proven elusive, because Warsaw has not been satisfied with the U.S. commitment to modernizing Poland's air defenses, which would cost billions of dollars.

Even if an agreement with Poland to base 10 interceptors there were to be reached this year, construction of either the Czech or the Polish site would not begin until next year at the earliest. That would allow the next president to pull the plug on the project.

"We face with the Iranians, and so do our allies and friends, a growing missile threat that is getting ever longer and ever deeper, and where the Iranian appetite for nuclear technology ... is still unchecked," Miss Rice said Tuesday.

Poland sent Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski to Washington Monday in an attempt to salvage the deal for the interceptors, which his government rejected on Friday.

He met with Ms. Rice hours before she flew to Prague and also planned to talk with Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama about the issue.