SPACE WEAPONS MUST BE BANNED

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Kislyakov).

The immediate task of international space legislation is to draft legal norms regulating certain types of human activity in outer space. First of all, this refers to the development of anti-satellite weapons and the elements of a space-based missile defence system.

It should be noted that neither Russia nor the US has declared its intention to deploy in near-Earth space any weapon systems capable of hitting targets both in space and on our planet. Moreover, at a Geneva session of the Disarmament Conference that was held in late August, Russia's permanent representative Leonid Skotnikov frankly stated, "the Russian Federation has no plans to create space weapon systems and deploy them in outer space. The creation of space weapons is not our choice."

At the same time, he specifically pointed to "obvious loopholes" in international space legislation that allow work on anti-satellite weapons and the elements of a space-based missile defence system to be conducted. This, in turn, is fraught with "the most serious complications and dangers. Why is the disarmament process linked with the military-space subject? Why is it that anti-satellite weapons might upset the military-strategic balance in the world and lead to the militarisation of space?

Firstly, in the late 1990s, a new strategic concept for fighting wars with precision weapons was clearly formulated in the world. Secondly, the US still decided to create a missile defence system, albeit in an abbreviated version. The connection with anti-satellite weapons is obvious. For a missile defence system to work, just like for precision weapons, the number of satellite support groups must be increased several fold. Considering that experts believe the total number of precision weapons in the more developed countries may reach 30,000-50,000 by 2010, while a new US missile defence system is, under the Memorandum of May 21, 2003, "a systemdesigned to protect the territory of the United States, our Armed Forces and those of our allies", it is easy to imagine the scale of the necessary orbital formations.

In other words, reconnaissance spacecraft, military navigation and weather satellites, as well as early warning satellites, although harmless in themselves, are becoming the components of a weapon system called "precision weapons - missile defence system". Any action is known to cause a reaction. It is quite probable that the world may be thrown back to the 1950s when the two superpowers started accelerating work on space interceptors. However, this time the situation will be more complicated than the bilateral confrontation.

The proposal to draft a treaty to prohibit the deployment of weapons in space, the use or threat of force in relation to space objects, set forth by Russia and China in 2002, is designed to partially fill in the gaps in international space legislation.

Experts in Geneva note that the initiative of Russia and China has received strong support at the Conference, which has 65 member countries. In particular, a Russian proposal to impose a moratorium on the deployment of weapons in space until the international community reaches a respective agreement on space weapons has been met with aproval.