US radar plans frightening Czechs
US radar plans frightening Czechs
Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:44:57 GMT
National demonstrations against the US missile shield in the Czech Republic
The US is pushing through a plan to station a radar base in the Czech Republic despite public protests.
Washington has transferred a large sum of money to the Czech Republic to fund the construction of the radar base which is part of a missile defense shield system, the Czech media reported.
The report has raised concerns among the Czech people who fear that US ambitious plans could turn their country into a battlefield in a war between Washington and its rivals.
Jan Neoral, the mayor of a village just a few kilometers away from the potential radar site had earlier held a referendum on the issue; the results had a clear message: 99% of the residents were against the radar base.
??Recently our Minister for the Environment told Parliament that he doesn't have the technical details for the radar, which still needs to be upgraded, so he can't judge what influence it will have on people and nature. However, last year a state commission had already concluded the radar was safe! That simply means the state report was a lie!? Neoral was quoted by The Russia Today as saying.
Neoral, also a radar expert, has independent reports indicating that the harmful effects of the radar waves could extend as far as 100 kilometers.
For a nation who witnessed "the Prague Spring", the shadow of another invasion by a foreign power sounds like a nightmare.
In the aftermath of the 1968 Prague Spring, communist troops under the Warsaw Pact rolled their tanks into the Czech Republic to violently halt the process of reforms that would grant the country's citizens more rights.
The US is planning to station a missile defense shield system in Poland and the Czech Republic, a move which has irked Russia. Moscow sees the plan as a threat to its national security.
SB/DA
