“Our government is firmly in the camp of looking for an opportunity to have an arms control agreement that would include all the countries that have these intermediate ballistic missiles,” US Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison said during a Tuesday call with reporters, a day before the alliance’s defense ministers meet in Brussels.
US’ POLITICAL CONCERNS
“Now America is going forward with the treaty protocol to give notice that we need to begin to develop a defense to the violating missiles that Russia has been developing.”
“We are very much concerned about any supply of Russian missile defense systems to any of our allies. We urge Turkey not to continue the development of this deal because it will not allow us to deliver the defense systems to Turkey which we could install there,” Hutchison said.
Hutchison’s statements came after Turkish spokesman İbrahim Kalın said last month that deliveries of Russian S-400 systems to Turkey are not intertwined with the possible purchase of US-manufactured Patriot anti-aircraft batteries.