Published Friday, February 23, 2001, in the
Miami Herald
'Some experts have taken up the issue following
President Vladimir Putin's trip to Cuba.' -- Yevgeny Maslin, headed nuclear
weapons department
MOSCOW -- (AP) -- If compromise isn't reached with the United States on the
national missile defense controversy, Russian military strategists are
considering potential responses, including sending missiles to Cuba, a retired
general said Thursday.
Yevgeny Maslin, who headed the Defense Ministry's nuclear weapons department
in the late 1990s, now works with the independent research institute PIR-Center,
was not speaking for the government, and there was no immediate reaction from
Russian officials to his statements about missiles in Cuba.
He said at a news conference that many in the Russian military appear to be
still locked into a Cold War mentality.
The Kremlin's 1962 move to base missiles in Cuba was one of the Cold War
period's tensest crises, until the Soviet Union backed off.
Now, Moscow and Washington again are in dispute over missiles -- this time
over the United States' intention to build a national missile shield system that
Russia says would wreck the global strategic security balance.
Russia this week offered the outline of an alternative and officials are
voicing hope of a compromise.
But strategists are also pondering what to do if the United States starts
building the shield, which Washington says is needed to protect against attacks
by small countries that may be developing nuclear capability.
President Vladimir Putin said last year that Moscow may opt out of existing
arms control agreements if the United States goes ahead with the system.
"There is even such an exotic option as the deployment of some
necessary weapons in Cuba,'' Maslin said. "Some experts have taken up the
issue following President Vladimir Putin's trip to Cuba.''
When Putin visited the old Soviet ally in December, he and Fidel Castro
spoke about revival of the political and economic ties that withered after the
Soviet collapse, but never mentioned resuming military cooperation.
Moscow still maintains an electronic spying facility in Lourdes, Cuba, that
eavesdrops on U.S. communications.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 