Desmond Butler
London
Guardian
Monday, January 22, 2007
Jospeh Biden, the chairman of the Senate's foreign relations
committee, warned against fostering an arms race in space yesterday
after China was reported to have conducted an anti-satellite weapons
test earlier this month.
Mr Biden, a Democrat, called the test provocative, but said the
US had ways of combatting the threat posed by the Chinese test.
"I don't think we should be overly worried about this at
this point," he told Fox News."We have ways to deal
with that ability. "The US said China conducted the test
earlier this month in which an old Chinese weather satellite was
destroyed by a missile.
Mr Biden, who is running for president, said George Bush's policy
on weapons in space needed to be reviewed.
"One of the things we have to talk about is whether or not
the, sort of, ideological base notion about how we deal with space
and weapons in space and the use of weapons from space is something
that is a path we should continue to follow," he said. In October,
Mr Bush signed an order asserting America's right to deny adversaries
access to space for hostile purposes. As part of the first revision
of US space policy in nearly 10 years, the policy also said Washington
would oppose the development of treaties that sought to prohibit
or limit US access to or use of space.
"This is not the direction we want to go, in escalating
competition in space. And we should be talking about it,"
Mr Biden said.
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