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Turkey set to host NATO early warning radar

World News

02-09-2011 | 13:41

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Turkey set to host NATO early warning radar

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Reuters reported Friday that Turkey had announced it will host a NATO early-warning radar system, which the United States said would go online this year to help spot missile threats coming from outside Europe -- including, potentially, from Iran.

Turkey, with NATO's second biggest military, has a geo-strategic importance to the alliance dating back to its role as a front-line state in the Cold War era. But its value to NATO has risen as Middle East states with anti-Western policies, like Iran, have developed their missile capabilities.

"Turkey's hosting of this element will constitute our country's contribution to the defense system being developed in the framework of NATO's new strategic concept," a foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement. "It will strengthen NATO's defense capacity and our national defense system," the spokesman said, adding the radar system was being allocated by the United States.

At the Pentagon, spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said the radar system would link into ships equipped with ballistic missile defenses operating in the Mediterranean. He said it was an outgrowth of the agreement at a NATO summit in Lisbon last November, where leaders approved a new mission statement for the Western military alliance, committing among other things to missile defense.

Commenting on a question about the radar's potential focus on Iran, Lapan said: "We made no secret of the fact that Iran's missile program is of concern." "But again the idea is a protective system that would protect those NATO allies from ballistic missile threats emanating outside (Europe), whether they came from a non-state actor -- whatever the source is," he said.

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