Mr. Lazio, who voted against a bill last year that called on President Clinton to deploy the missile shield as soon as possible, now supports deployment of the missile shield.
Hypocrisy is one word for the motives behind the deployment of the "Peninsula Shield" forces in Bahrain last week.
Elsewhere, several nations with a huge strategic stake in the deployment of the missile shield, including China and South Korea, had little to say on the American decision.
But with Barack Obama in the White House, the deployment of the missile shield in Eastern Europe is no longer a given, as defense experts question its costs, its effectiveness and even its location.
"The set of tools being used [against Russia] is broad and includes sanctions, the deployment of the global missile shield near our western and eastern borders, media wars, ungrounded accusations of Russia's cyber-attacks against nearly everywhere in the West, and, of course, attempts to discredit our Olympic athletes without proving facts," Lavrov said.
A complex sequence of mechanical operations was scheduled to follow--separation from a cruise ring that had supported the spacecraft, a fiery entry behind its heat shield, parachute deployment, jettisoning of the heat shield, radar locking onto the surface, separation from the parachute, and a rocket-powered deceleration to a gentle touchdown on the surface.
BERLIN — The Czech Republic and the United States are within months of signing three framework agreements on the deployment of the Pentagon's missile shield, Karel Schwarzenberg, the Czech foreign minister, said Wednesday.
NATO recently announced the deployment of a missile shield and four new battalions in the front line states bordering Russia, prompting former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to say the West is preparing for a "hot war".
If it becomes operational, the site will be a clear violation of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which allows some testing of antimissile technology but forbids deployment of a shield against long-range missiles in any state except North Dakota.
Mr. Spence was an early champion of a national missile-defense system and criticized the Clinton administration for moving, in his view, too slowly on research and deployment of a shield to defend from attack by ballistic missiles.
