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WSJ:__Slovak Foreign Minister Chides Romney on Missile Defense

By Julian E. Barnes
July 26, 2012, 5:17 PM

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney attacked President Barack Obama’s administration this week for abandoning Poland and the Czech Republic by altering plans for an American missile defense system in Europe.

But the Slovak foreign minister, in Washington this week for meetings with U.S. officials, said Thursday that Europe has fully embraced the new approach to missile defense and said Mr. Romney was dredging up settled debates.

“People have moved on,” said Miroslav Lajcak, the minister of foreign affairs and deputy prime minister, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We are in a different situation now. We are discussing a different project. I see no reason to revisit discussions from three years back.”

Mr. Romney, in his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Tuesday, said the Obama administration had failed to “nurture” America’s alliances, specifically citing Poland and the Czech Republic. Mr. Romney is due to visit Poland on Monday.

“It began with the sudden abandonment of friends in Poland and the Czech Republic,” Mr. Romney said. “They had courageously agreed to provide sites for our anti-missile systems, only to be told, at the last hour, that the agreement was off.”

During the Bush administration some Slovakian political leaders were critical of the missile defense plans in Poland and the Czech Republic, saying it was a bilateral, not a multilateral approach. But the Slovakian government has embraced the Obama administration’s missile defense plan, which relies on ship-based, not land-based, interceptors and is being developed under the umbrella of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Mr. Lajcak said that the missile defense system must continue to be a NATO project, and the U.S. and its European allies must continue to try and explain the defense plan to Russia, which remains skeptical.

“No individual country can protect themselves from global threats,” Mr. Lajcak said. “Global threats require global protection. The missile defense system is the answer.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/07/26/slovakian-foreign-minister-chides-romney-on-missile-defense/