By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said yesterday, the United States cannot be deterred from deploying a national missile defense despite misgivings among the allies and Russia.
"The United States has the right to deploy," Solana told reporters before meetings with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the national security assistant to President Bush.
But on an equally touchy issue, Europe's determination to create its own military corps to respond to crises, Solana was unyielding. He said the principle was established a decade ago when Bush's father was president and reaffirmed several times at summits in the Clinton years.
"We don't have to create a fuss about something that is not new," he said over breakfast in a hotel near the White House.
Later, state department spokesman Richard Boucher said "we just haven't reached full agreement within NATO and between NATO and the European Union on how some of these mechanisms should work."
Boucher said Powell wanted to know whether the force would be a complement to NATO and whether the Europeans would pay for it. He said Powell wanted to make sure "that we not try to duplicate the capabilities of NATO."
The two troublesome issues were aired at a two-day conference in Munich, Germany, last weekend amid signs the United States and its allies were being driven apart.
"These are very manageable problems," Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said after the Conference on Security Policy. "We ought to relax and talk it through."
Other observers were not so sanguine, even though Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld offered to help the Europeans with a missile defense while the Bush administration proceeds with trying to erect a shield against what it says are potential threats from North Korea, Iran and Iraq.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's national security assistant, Sergei B. Ivanov, said a vast missile defense program would undermine international stability and touch off an arms race, including one in outer space. Europeans also have been critical.
Solana, taking a softer tone, said yesterday the Europeans want to get involved in a dialogue with the Bush administration about the program. And, in a conciliatory gesture, the Spanish diplomat said the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibited a national missile defense, was between the United States and the Soviet Union, not Europe, and was revised in 1974. "It's not a Bible," he said.
Indeed, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush "intends to pursue that matter in consultation with our allies. He believes it's a very effective way to protect America and our allies."
