The U.S. permanent representative for NATO Ivo Daalder said that first a decision would be made, and details would be taken up later regarding the NATO missile-defense systems.
When asked his comment on the statement of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who said that without direct command over any NATO missile-defense systems in his territory, it would be impossible to accept such a deal, Daalder said, “the NATO decision on cooperation with regard to missile defense is going to be a decision that focuses on making a commitment to get the capability in place to protect NATO’s European territory and populations against ballistic-missile threats.”
“That’s the nature of the decision. All the details of how we’re going to implement that, including the command and control issues, are issues that will be addressed afterwards. First, we have to make a fundamental decision that NATO should have the capacity to build a system that can protect its population and territories,” said Daalder.
Daalder said, “with that decision, we expect and want a decision to create the command-and-control backbone, the software backbone, that NATO would fund, and that would be controlled like — as part of any other NATO command structure.”
In an earlier statement, Erdogan said, “if missile shield system is thought to be installed in our territories, its command should definitely be in our hands, otherwise it is impossible for us to accept such a thing.”
The system will be debated in the NATO Summit which will take place in Lisbon on November 19-20.
AA