Cold War Veterans Blog

Czech Cold War survivors on front line

By Gethin Chamberlain in Trocavec, Czech Republic, Sunday Telegraph

Last Updated: 12:25am GMT 18/02/2007

They made it through one cold war on the side of the Soviet Union, but now the people of the Czech Republic have been thrust back on to the front line of a new nuclear stand-off - this time on the side of the West.

	Jan Neoral, mayor of Trocavec, at the former Soviet military base: ‘We are afraid of terrorists’

America wants to site the radar base for its new anti-missile defence system, aimed at containing the threat from states such as Iran and North Korea, in an old Soviet-era base less than 40 miles from the Czech capital, Prague.

But the hi-tech plan - dubbed "Son of Star Wars" in a nod to Ronald Reagan's original Strategic Defence Initiative - has caused consternation in the neighbouring rural villages, where facilities are so basic that many people have to draw water from the wells outside their homes in buckets.

It is not just the prospect of becoming potential targets in a new global confrontation that has raised -concerns; the inhabitants fear the radar poses a threat to their health and even their television signals.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union stationed SS-20 nuclear missiles in the Jince military zone in the Brdy hills; since then, the Czech military have used it as an artillery firing range. But now, the Americans plan to demolish the rusting, green painted, metal gate, the fence of corrugated iron topped by barbed wire and the concrete barracks left over from the Soviet era to make way for the 150 or so staff who will man the new radar base. Read more.