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President Klaus Iohannis to meet Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace
President Klaus Iohannis will welcome at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg, according to a Presidential Administration announcement.
At the end of the meeting the two will hold a joint news conference.
In Bucharest, Stoltenberg will visit the Multinational Headquarters South-East together with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Defence. In Deveselu, the Secretary General will also attend an inaugural ceremony of Aegis Ashore Romania.
U.S., NATO and Romanian officials will hold a ceremony Thursday to mark the start of operations of the site in Deveselu, a village in southern Romania, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg due to deliver a speech. A day later Polish and U.S. officials will take shovels in hand to break ground at a planned site in the Polish village of Redzikowo, near the Baltic Sea. It is set to go online in 2018.
Both sites will be part of a system dubbed the European Phased Adaptive Approach, nomenclature indicating that its capabilities will grow as different elements become operational. For now the system also includes radar in Turkey and four naval destroyers with a home port in Spain. With only interim capabilities now, it is under command of the U.S. Navy but will be transferred to NATO once fully operational.
The system has been under development for years and is, NATO and U.S. officials say, aimed against potential long-range threats from the Middle East, mainly with Iran in mind. Yet Russia is adamantly opposed to having the advanced military system on its doorstep and the development is certain to further exacerbate tensions between Russia and the West that are more strained that at any time since the Cold War.
The United States and NATO say the missile shield — which is able to track and shoot down incoming missiles — is purely defensive and is, in any case, powerless against Russia's large stockpile of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
While the Kremlin doesn't view the NATO missile defense system as a threat to its nuclear forces in its current limited shape, it fears that the U.S.-led missile shield may eventually erode the deterrent potential of Russian nuclear forces when it grows more powerful in the future.
Russian officials have shrugged off the claim that the planned missile shield is intended to fend off missile threats from Iran, and President Vladimir Putin has pointed at the determination of the U.S. and NATO to pursue the project even after a nuclear deal with Iran as a proof that it's aimed against Russia.
Western officials deny that.
“We now have the capability to protect NATO in Europe,” said Robert Bell, a NATO envoy of U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. “The Iranians are increasing their capabilities, and we have to be ahead of that. The system is not aimed against Russia.”
The operation of the missile shield is likely to further exacerbate relations between Moscow and Washington, which have been tense since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014. Russia has argued that since the historic deal was agreed to in 2015 to curb Iran’s nuclear program, the missile shield is no longer a necessity.
“Ballistic missile defense sites could pose threats to the stability and strategic assets of the Russian Federation,” Ambassador to NATO Alexander Grushko told Reuters in April.
The U.S. has argued that missile proliferation is a growing threat despite the deal reached with Iran.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that the U.S. installation of a European missile defence shield in Romania, due to go live on Thursday, was a violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, Interfax reported.
The shield is on the verge of being activated almost a decade after Washington proposed protecting NATO from Iranian rockets and despite Russian warnings that the West is threatening the peace in central Europe.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said the decision to install the shield in Romania was a mistake and directly affected Russia’s national security.
"More and more countries are trying to develop or acquire ballistic missiles. Moreover, missile technology is becoming more sophisticated, lethal and accurate, and increasing in range," NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero told the Associated Press. "For us to discount or ignore that very real missile threat would be irresponsible."
The missile shield is based on a radar system that tracks missiles and fires interceptors to destroy any potential threat. The European missile shield plan was relaunched by President Barack Obama in 2009 after being agreed to under George W. Bush in 2007.