Italy Min: US, Russia, Europe Should Build “New Security Order”

ROME (AFP)–U.S. President-elect Barack Obama should work with Russia and Europe to build a “new world security order” in which a missile shield would have no place, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Wednesday.

“Europe, Russia and America (should) build together a new world security order,” he told the Italian daily La Repubblica, adding that missiles “have no usefulness at all in this context.”

The remarks came after Moscow said it wouldn’t deploy missiles in Kaliningrad, wedged between Lithuania and Poland, if the U.S. scrapped the missile defense shield, prompting Washington to say the plan didn’t target Russia.

Frattini said: “I advise (the U.S.) to change its approach: Russia has badly interpreted the American missile shield, considering it a sign of enmity. This situation should be reversed.”

Obama’s government couldn’t “allow itself to deploy the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic because it cannot allow Russian missiles in Kaliningrad,” Frattini said.

Hours after Obama’s victory last week, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced plans to deploy Iskander short-range missiles in Kaliningrad, in response to U.S. plans for the missile shield.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski said later that Obama had told him in a telephone call that “the anti-missile shield project would go ahead” in which 10 missile interceptors would be set up in Poland under a deal signed Aug. 14.

However Obama’s foreign policy advisor Dennis McDonough said the president- elect “made no commitment” on the shield during the conversation.

Frattini, commenting on Obama’s pledge to beef up the U.S. role in Afghanistan, said that an “American administration that is more engaged in Afghanistan than before…cannot afford a cold war with the Russian Federation.”

Frattini also called for “caution” towards bringing Ukraine and Georgia into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, another source of tension between Moscow and Washington.

AFP | Wednesday, November 12, 2008