Leaked cable concerns strategic rethink following abandonment of bilateral missile defence strategy

Czech-US relations are caught up in the massive publication of US diplomatic messages being released by the WikiLeaks server. So far the site has released just one letter from the US embassy in Prague dating from October 2009. It concerns the reset of relations following President Barack Obama’s decision a month earlier to abandon his predecessor’s anti-missile defence shield plans involving a radar base in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in neighbouring Poland. The letter gives a snapshot of how the US side is trying to encourage the Czechs to think more broadly about future strategic cooperation, with the Czech side struggling to deal with the reset. According to the Guardian newspaper over 1,000 of the overall 250,000 cables are out of Prague.