Gorbachev - Bush Missiles Target Russia Not Iran

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said Wednesday that he viewed a U.S. plan to deploy a missile defense shield in Central Europe as targeting Russia, not Iran.

"(On Tuesday) Milos Zeman, the former Czech prime minister, said, ‘What kind of Iran threat do you see? This is a system that is being created against Russia,'" Gorbachev said. "I don't think Zeman is alone in seeing this. We see this as well as he sees it."

The United States wants to place a radar station in the Czech Republic and intercepter missiles in Poland, saying the components would defend European allies against a possible Iranian strike.

Gorbachev, 76, whose policies of glasnost and perestroika - openness and restructuring - helped end communism in the Soviet Union and its satellites, criticized the high level of military spending by the United States.

"Does America intend to fight the rest of the world, does America need to build a new empire? They will not succeed," Gorbachev said at the close of a meeting of the World Political Forum, a group he founded in 2003 that includes many former high-ranking politicians.

Gorbachev, who won the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, said negotiations with Iran needed to continue with the involvement of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, to ensure Iran did not produce nuclear weapons.

Gorbachev said he hoped the United States would not attack Iran during the remainder of the term of U.S. President George W. Bush. Moscow News