Blair in talks with Bush to site US defence shield in Britain

Tony Blair was facing a fresh wave of opposition last night after it emerged he has been in secret negotiations with George Bush to put American anti-ballistic weapons on British soil as part of the American "Star Wars" defensive shield.

As thousands prepared to demonstrate in London today against the renewal of Britain's Trident nuclear weapons, the prospect of US missiles stationed in Britain threatened to revive scenes like the women's protest camp at Greenham Common, which ended after the Cold War.

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The siting of the weapons in Europe has led to a hostile reaction from Russia, causing fears of a new Cold War. One worrying question was being posed at Westminster by a growing band of opponents: "Whose finger will be on the trigger in a crisis?"

Mr Blair's foreign affairs adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, who will become Britain's ambassador in Washington in the summer, has been leading the negotiations to station 10 interceptor missiles at US bases in the British Isles.

The US made it clear it would prefer to station the missiles in forward positions in Poland and the Czech Republic, which have both offered to take the weapons. But European capitals have been alarmed by their offer, which led to a warning by Russia that they would be targeted in Russian defence plans, and Britain could be seen as a safer fall-back option for the US.

Mr Blair has discussed allowing the silos to be built in Britain with other key cabinet ministers on an ad-hoc basis, but there has been no formal cabinet committee discussion.

Gordon Brown has been consulted about the cost to Britain, and is said by colleagues to be "sceptical". The Chancellor may distance himself from the plan to demonstrate a break with Mr Blair's apparently unquestioning support for the Bush administration's foreign policy when he takes over the Government in the summer.

The missiles are part of the US national missile defence programme, which dates from the final days of the Cold War. It was designed to destroy incoming nuclear ballistic missiles from eastern Europe using weapons in space.

Mr Blair agreed in 2003 to allow the US to upgrade the early warning radar tracking station at Fylingdales in North Yorkshire, and the US-dominated Menwith Hill spy post near Harrogate, to direct the interceptor missiles to their targets. However, until yesterday Downing Street had denied that it was prepared to allow the silos for interceptor missiles to be built on British soil.

A Downing Street spokesman said: "The Prime Minister thinks it is a good idea that we are part of the consideration by the US. We believe that it is an important step towards providing missile defence coverage for Europe, of which we are part.

"We have certainly been engaged in conversations with the US about this. The objective of these conversations was to make sure that the UK is kept in consideration to be one of the locations for the system, should the US press ahead with the system."

The US deputy chief of mission in London, David Johnson, said: "As we go forward, there may be opportunities for us to talk to other countries about their needs, but right now we are concentrating on the Czech Republic and on Poland as the primary sites where we would be looking for this," he told BBC radio.

The Prime Minister's eagerness to accept the weapons was seen by Labour MPs as part of an attempt by Mr Blair to clear the decks on legacy issues including a replacement for Trident, the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and cuts in NHS waiting times, before handing over to Mr Brown. One Labour MP said it was like "a fire sale".

The Labour MEP Glenys Kinnock said: "We are talking about a weapons system from another era. There are many more issues we face which would not be addressed by this very high-tech and extremely expensive system."

The Labour MP Harry Cohen accused President Bush of using Britain to kick-start a new Cold War to try to achieve US military dominance "in order to threaten any country the US doesn't like, including Iran". He added: "We will be asking, 'Whose finger is on the trigger?' But we know the answer and it won't be ours."

* Forty-five people were arrested yesterday after a blockade of Britain's nuclear submarine base at Faslane. Seven Greenpeace vessels, including the 164ft Arctic Sunrise, attempted to gain entry to Faslane Naval Base on the Clyde as part of an anti-nuclear protest.

The day culminated in the storming and seizure of the Arctic Sunrise by police after a five-hour stand-off.

Greenpeace timed its action today to coincide with the visit of a delegation of Labour MPs to Faslane.

A technology that remains unproven

The Strategic Defence Initiative - as detailed in 1983 when President Ronald Reagan made his famous "Star Wars" speech - involved satellites that could track and destroy ballistic missiles with lasers and interceptors in space.

But the reality of developing technology to track and destroy a fast-moving ballistic missile turned out to be devilishly difficult.

Traditional early-warning radar was designed to provide the West with information about a Soviet nuclear attack in order to have time to launch a counter-attack.

But Star Wars has since been transformed into the Missile Defence System, which still invokes the idea of tracking and destroying incoming ballistic missiles with a network of satellites, ground-based radars, high-velocity intercepting missiles and airborne lasers.

Military satellites with infra-red sensors are designed to spot the trail of heat given off by a ballistic missile during its launch phase. Midcourse sensors are then supposed to track their trajectory and feed data to a network of ground-based radars, which monitor the missiles when they come over the horizon.

When the trajectories are tracked, long-range interceptors are supposed to destroy the missiles by direct hits. Any that get through are then mopped up by shorter-range interceptors.

But Paul Ingram, an analyst at the British American Security Information Council, said: "The technology is wholly unproven. It is like using a bullet to hit a bullet. The challenge is so difficult that this is just building sandcastles in the sky. It [also] makes Britain more vulnerable. If there is a country which seeks to attack the US, this is the first line of defence so we would be attacked first."