Budapest - US officials have reassured Russia that a missile strike against a failed spy satellite was carried out to negate a danger to human life rather than as a test of the US missile defence system's capability to hit satellites, a US official said Thursday. John Rood, acting undersecretary for arms control and international security, was in Budapest to meet a Russian delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak over controversial US plans to base elements of a missile defence system in Europe. Rood said they discussed the destruction of the spy satellite during the meeting.
"We had a full exchange on the subject, we have shown transparency and explained our reasons for the action," he told journalists after the meeting. "We had our chief missile engineer there to provide information on this operation."
"There was no attempt by the US to have a weapon for anti- satellite purposes," he continued. "The reason the operation was conducted was concern over the threat to human life if the satellite was allowed to enter the atmosphere on its own."
The Navy fired an unarmed missile to take out the rogue satellite, which carried a tank filled with a toxic fuel called hydrazine, before it was due to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere in the first week of March.
President George W Bush authorized the shoot-down of the satellite to minimize the threat posed by the fuel to humans, but the act prompted protests from Russia and China, who argued the operation could be seen as a test of the US missile-defence system's ability to hit satellites.
Marine General James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there was a "high degree of confidence" the tank was ruptured, but another one to two days of analysis was required to be certain.
