Plans by the United States to station parts of its missile shield in Eastern Europe must not spark a new arms race and should not be allowed to split Europe, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has said, according to dpa. Writing in the Sunday edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, Steinmeier said the system of interceptor missiles and tracking stations planned for Poland and the Czech Republic should not be the cause of a new round of rearmament nor the pretext for one. "We do not want a new arms race in Europe," the German foreign minister says, noting that no missile shield could offer total protection. "Our highest priority remains disarmament not rearmament," he says, urging that security should not be achieved "at the price of mistrust or even renewed insecurity." Steinmeier called on Washington and Moscow to overcome "obsolete ways of thinking about confrontation."
