Concerns voiced over missile defense systems

The expansion by the United States of its global missile defense system will damage the strategic balance and potentially spark a new arms race, Chinese and Russian representatives to a disarmament conference in Geneva said at a joint briefing on Tuesday.

Major General Zhang Jian, head of the Combat Bureau of the Joint Staff Department of China's Central Military Commission, said China and Russia would take further measures to protect their national security interests and the regional strategic balance.

Zhang said missile defense systems have a profound impact on the world's strategic balance, stability, peace and security, as well as arms control and disarmament.

"The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system deployed by the US on Republic of Korea soil far surpasses its need for national defense," Zhang said in the statement. "It is, in fact, a chess piece in the US global missile defense system."

The US move will "inevitably worsen the global security environment" and "severely jeopardize the nuclear disarmament process, spark conflicts and even arms races, and destroy the international and regional balance," he said.

Russian Lieutenant General Viktor Poznikhir, deputy chief of the Main Operational Directorate of General Staff, said the US has established a global missile deterrence system since withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. This could create unforeseeable consequences, including "lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons", he said.

Ma Gang, a professor at National Defense University of the People's Liberation Army, said the briefing was a timely warning to the US for disregarding China's and Russia's security concerns.

"This joint briefing not only demonstrates Sino-Russian mutual strategic trust, but also sends a clear message to the US that any future countermeasures taken by China and Russia for self-defense would be justified," Ma said.

zhangzhihao@chinadaily.com.cn