Leader of the junior member of the ruling coalition, the Slovak National Party (SNS), Jan Slota, agrees with Prime Minister Robert Fico that for the Slovak Republic, any installation of U.S. missile defense bases in Slovakia would be unacceptable. "Probably even a child knows that the bases in the Czech Republic and in Poland are not going to be aimed at Iran, nor at North Korea, which is now almost in a different galaxy," added Mr. Slota. According to Mr. Slota, the statement of Slovak Foreign Minister Jan Kubis that the missile defense system the U.S. plans to install in the Czech Republic and Poland will contribute to security, is official foreign policy derived from international agreements with NATO and the European Union (EU). He thinks, however, that the majority of EU countries is against the deployment of radar and missile bases. "Mr. Fico is basically right, because other politicians of the EU do not like this idea either," stated Mr. Slota.
According to the prime minister's spokesperson Silvia Glendova, Mr. Fico is planning to present the Russian president with his opinion on plans for the U.S. missile defense bases on his official visit to Russia on Friday. She repeated that if these were to be built in Slovakia, Mr. Fico would be against the idea. Defense Minister Frantisek Kasicky is neither for nor against the bases, however, he insists that the issue be discussed in NATO. "NATO has not yet discussed this subject. Missile defense has been discussed before, but only hypothetically. U.S. negotiations with the Czech Republic and Poland were a new issue, said Mr. Kasicky on Thursday. Foreign Minister Jan Kubis emphasized for journalists on Wednesday that the project agreed upon by the U.S., Poland and the Czech Republic differs from the NATO project. "We want the missile defense project to be discussed first and foremost within NATO," stated Kubis and added that Slovakia wishes these two projects to be gradually interlinked. "We hope that one day this trilateral American-Polish-Czech project of missile defense will become one unified project. This is not yet the case today, but it is the direction in which we want to go," said Kubis.
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