If the USA and Russia agree upon implementation of Gabala radar station, no one will ever ask Baku's opinion about the issue

PanARMENIAN.Net - In other words if the great powers agree upon implementation of Gabala radar station, no one will ever ask Baku's opinion about the issue. It should also be mentioned that Azerbaijan thinks that with the help of Gabala Radar Station Russia realizes a kind of technical reconnaissance of Turkey, which gives Baku grounds to worry. But the radar station will enable spying on Iran, which is more important now. We may assume that Putin's step might be dictated by its wish to be with the West in the issue regarding Iran nuclear problem. It is hard to predict whether or not the relationship between Moscow and Tehran will go worse if the RF President takes an obvious pro-western position in this issue. Yet, there is no doubt that this radar station is of great interest to the USA. Another consideration is that Putin simply doesn't want to be involved in arms race keeping in mind what it led to in the times of Ronald Reagan. Then exactly the arms race became one of the reasons of the USSR breakdown, and Putin certainly doesn't want Russia's breakdown.

On January 25, 2002 Heydar Aliyev and Vladimir Putin signed an intergovernmental agreement "about the status, the principles and conditions of implementation of informational-analytical center in Gabala". As a result Russia gained the right of using the station with the period of 10 years. The object lease will cost Moscow $7 million a year, $5 million for energy usage, plus $10 million for all public utilities. The term of lease expires in 2012, when the station is already outdated in spite of the ongoing upgrades.

"The radar station in Gabala indeed allows controlling not only the launch of intercontinental missiles, but also cruise missiles in a huge sector to the south of the Russian border. Russia's proposal to the USA regarding the missile defense system speaks of Russia's readiness to solve the security problems together with America and Europe in a constructive way," said the RF first deputy prime minister Sergey Ivanov.

The station is located near the city Gabala in Azerbaijan. It is a fixed radar station like Daryal, included in the system of missile attack prevention. The construction has been carried out since 1976. The radar station is used for tracking the launch of ballistic missile from Asia and the area of the Indian Ocean, as well as for controlling the space objects. Daryal cannot cover missiles one after another, which theoretically must be headed to Europe.

The experts claim that from the military point of view one only radar station in Azerbaijan will protect the Continent from hypothetic threat from Iran and North Korea better, than the whole program of locating new missile defense system in Europe worked out by the Pentagon. And this project will cost much less expensive. But a contradictory image is seen in the countries which are directly involved in these events; the official representatives of the Czech Republic and Poland do not hurry to feel glad together with EU, and it is quite understandable; besides the military aspects, the project of "the European missile shield" promises a number of economic benefits to their countries. However, it should not be disregarded that the 2/3 of the population of their countries is against locating the US elements of missile defense radar system in their territories.