The Czech government is on the verge of a crisis. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said his Cabinet might collapse in the fall. He admitted the Cabinet lost a firm majority in Parliament over the possible deployment of a high-frequency radar of the U.S. third positioning strategic missile defense area in the Czech Republic. Environmentalist deputies did not even want to hear about it, while others insist on a nationwide referendum, which the government cannot win because 68 percent of the population is emphatically against the deployment.

The situation in the Czech Republic is not the only bad news for the Pentagon. U.S. relations with Poland are even worse. Warsaw demands that Washington pay $20 billion for the missile interceptor base at Gorsko. Poland wants to spend the money on reforming its armed forces and protecting itself against a potential Russian threat. It is planning, among other things, to buy American Patriot PAC-3 air defense systems.

Moscow generals already have promised Warsaw to retarget their missiles to American positions, and to deploy tactical Iskander-M missiles in the Kaliningrad Region, from where they can reach U.S. ground-based interceptors in Poland. But this is merely a side effect.

What matters more is the Pentagon does not agree with the price. It is offering a thousand times less in the hope the Polish government will pay the rest from its own budget. The talks continue, but their prospects are rather bleak.

In the meantime, the U.S. House of Representatives has cut spending on the U.S. missile defense program in Europe in the 2008-2009 fiscal year by $720 million. Expenses on the construction of bases in the Czech Republic and Poland have been reduced by $232 million. Congress declared this restriction would be valid until Washington signed agreements with Prague and Warsaw on the deployment of the radar and missile interceptors on their territory.

This means the current Republican administration will not be able to start the deployment of the U.S. missile defense system in Europe. Leading U.S. experts on missile defense -- Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, and Philip Coyle, senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information -- expressed this opinion at the Carnegie Center during their recent visit to Moscow.

The Carnegie Center hosted a roundtable discussion on the future of missile defenses in U.S. strategy and policy, and the American experts, both Democrats, agreed that if their nominee Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., wins the presidential election, which is quite likely, the deployment of the missile defense system in Europe, which worries Russia so much, may be put on the back burner.

This may happen not only because the Pentagon cannot reach a final agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic, but also because the threat emanating for the United States from ballistic missiles from "rogue states," among which Washington lists Iran, is not as severe as the administration portrays it.

Next: Russia's missile defense cooperation proposal

(Nikita Petrov is a military commentator for RIA Novosti. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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