Missiles

Days before Iran was to meet with the U.S. and other world powers over its disputed nuclear program, the nation test fired medium-range missiles today capable of reaching Israel, Europe and American bases in the Persian Gulf, according to the country's Revolutionary Guard. The missiles -- Shahab-3 and Sajjil -- were launched in the desert as part of military exercises that began before the U.S., France and Britain accused Tehran over the weekend of building a secret uranium-enrichment plant in the mountains.

The U.S. and Russia may be able to find common ground on the key issues of missile defense and nuclear arms reductions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday. Lavrov and Clinton spoke positively, if cautiously, after meeting in Geneva in an effort to ease tensions between the countries. "We did not agree on everything, of course, but we agreed to work on every issue," Lavrov said.

Poland's foreign minister said Friday that his country had agreed in principle to a controversial missile defense system proposed by the U.S. after receiving assurances that Washington would help with other defense needs.

The successful U.S. missile strike against a failing spy satellite 133 miles above the Earth on Wednesday bolstered the credibility of America's long-troubled missile defense system, according to military experts. U.S. military officials have sought to play down the strategic value of the operation, saying that it was solely intended to take out a malfunctioning satellite hurtling toward Earth with a tank of toxic rocket fuel.

The military's analysis of the missile strike on a dead U.S. spy satellite has revealed no sign of danger from debris, including no hazard from the satellite's fuel tank, a Pentagon spokesman said Friday. "As we continue to do the post-strike analysis, [it] continues to give us confidence that the hydrazine tank was ruptured. However, the analysis is still ongoing," spokesman Bryan Whitman said. U.S.

Three Palestinian men picnicking in a field in the northern Gaza Strip were killed Saturday by an Israeli tank missile, said a Palestinian official and relatives of the dead. The Israeli military confirmed the cross-border attack near the city of Beit Hanoun but said it targeted Palestinian militants on their way to fire mortar shells at Israel. A Palestinian Health Ministry official identified two of the dead, Ibrahim Abu Jarad, 25, and Mohammed Hassan, 26, as employees of the Bank of Jordan.

With American officials working to close a deal on a missile defense system in Europe, the head of the U.S. program warned Thursday that Iran was within two or three years of producing a missile that could reach most European capitals. "They're already flying missiles that exceed what they would need in a fight with Israel. Why? Why do they continue this progression in terms of range of missiles? It's something we need to think about," Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering III, director of the U.S.

North Korea test-fired several short-range missiles off its west coast today in a possible effort to show dissatisfaction toward the new South Korean government and lack of progress in nuclear disarmament talks. The missile launches, reported by Yonhap news agency citing unidentified government officials, came a day after the government in Pyongyang expelled South Korean experts at a joint industrial zone just north of the shared border.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has ordered a complete inventory of the nation's nuclear arsenal and all associated components after the discovery last week that four secret nuclear missile parts had been mistakenly sent to Taiwan, an error that went unnoticed for more than 18 months. Gates had already ordered a high-level investigation into how the four nose-cone fuse assemblies for U.S.

A State Department envoy assigned to reduce the worldwide supply of shoulder-fired missiles said Tuesday that missiles traded on the black market remain a potential threat to civilian aircraft. In his first public comments since beginning the effort six months ago, Lincoln P. Bloomfield Jr. said that there is a total of about 500,000 missiles of the type that have been used to shoot down 28 civilian planes since the 1970s, killing 600 to 800 people. Even though the U.S.