Turkish officials insist that the NATO missile defense system should not target any country, including Iran and Syria, Xinhua reports.
Turkish National Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul said that Turkey does not intend to target any country. He made this remark after his return from a meeting of foreign and defense ministers of NATO member countries in Brussels on Thursday, when details of the alliance's new strategic concept were discussed.
"During the meeting in Brussels, we told the US officials that Iran and Syria should not be considered as 'threats' by NATO," a source in the Turkish Foreign Ministry reported.
A NATO member since 1952, Turkey demands the missile shield be launched under the framework of a "deterrence" concept and opposes naming any particular state as being a threat against the alliance in NATO's official papers .
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen proposed expanding NATO's existing missile defense system, which currently covers deployed troops only, to protect citizens of all member-states by linking up the anti-missile systems of member states.
Negotiations over the matter between the US and Turkey as well as Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria, have been held.
The Turkish defense minister said on Friday that Turkey was still assessing the proposed NATO missile defense system, while denying that the US was pressuring Turkey to make a decision.
NATO's new strategy aims to reshape the alliance in the next decade to meet emerging threats with top efficiency. Once adopted at the Lisbon summit it will become NATO's third strategy since the end of the Cold War.
