MOSCOW. March 11 (Interfax-AVN) - The Pentagon's recent offer to share some secret data on NATO's planned European missile defense with Russia is unlikely to bring about a solution to the American-Russian dispute over the project, a Russian security expert argued.
"I doubt that the offer of the U.S. Defense Department, which has been voiced in general terms, will be put into practice by the American side as Russia is not a member of the trans-Atlantic alliance. Moreover, the legislation of the United States prohibits the sharing of technological secrets with countries that are not its 100% military and political allies and countries with which there are no plans for joint combat operation on a global scale," Vladimir Kozin, a member of the expert council of a Kremlin working group for liaison with NATO on the European missile defense plan, told Interfax-AVN.
Earlier, U.S. Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Bradley Roberts said at a meeting of the Congressional Subcommittee on Armed Services that President Barack Obama's administration was willing to share some secret information on the planned missile shield with Russia in a bid to break the deadlock in Russian-American talks on the plan.
"Offers of this kind, if they really are a serious invitation to a discussion on the missile defense between Washington and Moscow, would only be made in official form and not through the media or through public statements," said Kozin, who is a senior researcher at the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies (RISI).
"The likeliest reason for this statement is the upcoming summit of NATO in Chicago, which is scheduled for the second half of May of this year and where the member countries of the alliance are going to approve further plans for the implementation of the joint European missile defense project," Kozin said.
He said the aim of Roberts' statement was "to lure Russian representatives to a Russia-NATO summit the possibility of holding which on the fringes of the Chicago summit is not being excluded by the NATO leadership, albeit with reservations." At such a meeting, "Moscow is unlikely to be offered anything of substance on the missile defense issue," Kozin said.
"It would hardly make any sense for Russian representatives to be present at that," he added.
Nor would the Pentagon's initiative solve the main problem as it does not mean a proposal for setting up a joint or "cooperative" NATO-Russian missile defense in Europe, he said.