Russia, NATO far from creating joint missile shield: report

 There is certainly little hope that Russia and NATO will agree on setting up a joint missile shield, a report released here on Sunday in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly spring session stated.

As outlined by Raymond Knops, who presented the Draft Basic Report titled "Missile Defence: the Way Ahead for NATO," the realization of agenuine collaborative missile defense effort between Russia and NATO seems to become far more challenging than the technical hurdles facing the NATO program.

The two sides' fundamental vision for the program stay far apart, and there seems to become small hope that an agreement will emerge, the report stated.

On the other hand, the report mentioned that the primary signpost for assessing progress in this endeavor will come at the June 2011 meeting of NATO Russia Council Defense Ministers, exactly where a complete Joint Analysis with the future framework for broader missile defense co-operation is usually to be assessed.

The report also said the endeavor may perhaps also be facing some urgency, not just as a result of the pressures implied by Russian expectations, but additionally as a consequence of the electoral calendars in the United states and Russia.

"Should the issue of missile defense grow to be substantial in either country's presidential campaigns, the prospects for considerable agreements may be compromised, at the least in the short term," the report said.

Russia and NATO agreed to cooperate on the so-called Euro missile shield through the Russia-NATO Council summit in Lisbon in November 2010.

NATO insists there need to be two independent systems that exchange info, though Russia favors a joint system with full-scale interoperability and demands NATO to guarantee that the method wouldn't be aimed against Russian targets.

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