CONGRESS CONSIDERS CUTTING MISSILE DEFENSE
PanARMENIAN.Net
10.05.2007 17:14 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The U.S. Congress was considering cutting funding
to the White House’s plan to build a missile defense system in
Eastern Europe.
Democrats said the high-tech system, which has strained relations
with Russia, is unproven, The New York Times reported.
But the White House said it is necessary to move ahead with
construction in Poland and the Czech Republican soon to prepare for
long-range missiles that could come from Iran.
A House subcommittee was considering legislation that would cut
$160 million in funding from the missile defense program, delaying
construction on interceptor silos in Poland. A similar bill was in
the works in the Senate.
The Government Accountability Office reported in March an anti-missile
program "cannot yet be fully assessed because there have been too
few flight tests conducted to anchor the models and simulations that
predict overall system performance," the newspaper reported.
But the director of the Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Henry
A. Obering III, disagreed, telling the newspaper, "I do believe we
are on the right path."